In Praise of Lives Without Life-Styles BREATHING LESSONS by Anne Tyler; Knopf; 327 pages; $18.95

By R.Z. Sheppard

In the literary marketplace, "breakthrough books" are the ones that finally get what publishers like to refer to as the audience their authors deserve. Breakthroughs also mean big enough sales to justify past advances for all those critically successful though financially disappointing books that had to be remaindered. But not every good writer produces bulldozers. Anne Tyler has only dented the best-seller lists. She has a loyal following of reviewers as well as general readers. But one does not think of her as a breakthrough writer. After eleven novels, she just grows on you.

Since her first book, If Morning Ever Comes (1964), Tyler, 46, has held and cultivated her ground (mainly Baltimore, where she lives with her husband and two daughters), aware of but not unduly influenced by social trends and media dazzle. Her work has evolved organically, from relatively simple tales of aspirations and young love to more complex narratives about marriages and the eccentric flowerings of unrealized dreams. To the extent that she writes situation seriocomedy about American families, Tyler has ties to John Updike, although she does not possess his magic flute or his steamy sense of original sin. Also, her rabbits do not run.

The bachelor sculptor of Celestial Navigation (1974), for example, panics if he has to go to the grocery store. The unhappy wife in Earthly Possessions (1977) plans to leave her husband but is relieved of the decision when she is kidnaped during a bank holdup. The eccentric hero of Morgan's Passing (1980) handles the problem of freedom not with flight but with flamboyant masquerades. The poignant conceit of Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982) is a beanery that resembles a kitchen where lonely people can assemble, if only for a meal. The Accidental Tourist (1985), Tyler's most winsome expression of imagination on a short tether, is about a travel writer who hates to travel.

Maggie and Ira Moran, the middle-aged couple of Breathing Lessons, are not out to impress us with special interests or personalities. The pair represents that vast majority of Americans who live lives without life-styles. Both characters came of age during the postwar conservatism of the 1950s. After 20 years of depression and war, a future that promised a secure job, a steady mate and two children seemed more than enough. There were, of course, degrees of modest expectations. Maggie recalls the remarks of her childhood friend Serena, just before Serena married a boy named Max: "It's just time to marry, that's all . . . I'm so tired of dating! I'm so tired of keeping up a good front! I want to sit on the couch with a regular, normal husband and watch TV for a thousand years."

Ira wanted to be a physician but abandoned this ambition to take over his father's framing shop in Baltimore. Maggie gave up the chance to go to college to work at the nearby Silver Threads Nursing Home, where she remains a geriatric nursing assistant. He, quietly frustrated by knowing all there is to know about cutting 45 degrees angles in strips of wood, plays solitaire for relief. Maggie, the care giver, has found her niche propping the pillows and emptying the bedpans of the elderly. She is never bored.

Breathing Lessons, like all of Tyler's work, is about character. But it is also about marriage as fate and mystery, something that grows, for better or for worse, in flood and drought. As Tyler puts it, Ira and Maggie's union "was as steady as a tree; not even he could tell how wide and deep the roots went." If Tyler believes that men and women have different ways of feeling about family, she does not elaborate. Yet there are familiar responses: Ira is frequently bemused and annoyed by the behavior of his wife and children; Maggie is spurred by an instinct to preserve relationships.

She demonstrates this quality from the moment she fetches the old family Dodge from the body shop and immediately has a fender bender with a delivery truck. She had been distracted by the coming activities of the day: first, to drive with Ira 90 miles to Deer Lick, Pa., to attend the funeral of Serena's husband Max; second, and more important, to detour on the way home to try to persuade her estranged daughter-in-law Fiona to return to Baltimore with her baby.

Much of Breathing Lessons takes place while Ira and Maggie are in their car. Driving with one's spouse is, of course, a leading cause of marital tension, especially if one of the party has just banged up the conveyance. Max's funeral provides an opportunity for the class of '56 to indulge its nostalgia. Serena insists on showing her wedding movies. Snatches of Moonglow, I Almost Lost My Mind and Unchained Melody are recalled. Sugar, the aging class beauty, sings Que Sera, Sera during the service and wonders if it was in good taste.

Maggie's efforts to reunite Fiona with her son Jesse, a member of a local roadhouse rock band, are futile. The young adults still seem to be attracted to each other, but they are too touchy and impatient. Maggie finds symptoms of the age by comparing today's music with the songs of her generation: "It used to be 'Love Me Forever' and now it's 'Help Me Make It Through the Night.' "

Throughout, Tyler's touch is gentle but firm. She is consciously less dramatic than she has been in her recent novels. Yet Breathing Lessons fits naturally into the landscape of her work. Some readers may be reminded of The Big Chill or even of Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. Not quite. Rather, < Tyler pays tribute to ordinariness the hard way: without benefit of her usual whimsy and antic inventiveness. Every page says, about as well as it can be said, that what you are reading about may not be wonderful, but it is life.