Redhead by the Side of the Road Summary and Reviews

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Cathryn Conroy

Oh, I Loved This Book! It's Tender, Humorous, Wise, and Just Plain Delightful
No one — no one!— writes like Anne Tyler. This, her 23rd novel, is by turns tender, humorous, wise, and just plain delightful. Told with candor and compassion, the story is the literary equivalent of comfort food. The quirky characters, the life lessons, and the essential nature of human relationships are all here, wrapped up in a short novel that just took my breath away it was so astoundingly good.

Micah Mortimer is in his early 40s. A bachelor, he is superintendent of a small apartment house in Baltimore, Maryland and operates a very part-time computer repair business called Tech Hermit. He runs at 7:15 a.m. every day. On each day of the week, he does a special cleaning chore. For example, on Thursdays he cleans the kitchen and one cabinet, rotating through the cabinets week by week until he starts over again. He begins each morning with a run, followed by a shower and breakfast. Micah, the youngest of five children and the only boy, grew up in a chaotic household. As an adult, his life is built around the calmness of order and routine. But suddenly the routine and order of his life is shattered. An 18-year-old boy, the son of his college girlfriend, unexpectedly shows up on Micah's doorstep thinking Micah is his biological father, while Micah's girlfriend of three years unexpectedly and abruptly breaks up with him.

Everything about this novel is perfect. As in all of Anne Tyler's books, this is a character study first and foremost. What happens—what little plot there is—is truly secondary. The sparkling gem of the book is how profound truths and joys about life are revealed so lovingly and beautifully by simply showing us the life of one flawed and finicky man as he tries so hard to be good soul.

Oh, I loved this book! Treat yourself and read it.

Bonus: When you find out who is the redhead by the side of the road, it's bound to make you smile if not actually laugh out loud.

mary c

This is a gem of a novel: witty, moving and wise.
If you want to understand the everyday life of Americans, read Anne Tyler . . . There is no one better at taking the ordinary person—the one we don’t even notice in the supermarket queue—and showing us what lies beneath . . .

Cloggie Downunder

If only this dose of Tyler’s magic had been longer…
Redhead By The Side Of The Road is the twenty-third novel by award-winning, best-selling American author, Anne Tyler. At forty-three, Micah Mortimer isn’t dissatisfied with his life: it may be predictable, but having an adequate place to live, just enough work, and the company of a woman friend suits him fine. Excitement is overrated.

“He and Cass had been together for three years or so, and they had reached re things had more or less solidified: compromises arrived at, incompatibilities adjusted to, minor quirks overlooked. They had it down to a system, you could say.”

Micah exercises daily, eats healthy food and has a series of (not entirely inflexible) routines that give him a sense of control. He makes house calls around the city for his IT business, Tech Hermit and, while being careful not to get too involved, looks after the tenants in his building in his role as unofficial super. From his older sisters and their families, there is a mixture of concern and amusement at the way he lives his life.

Then, in the space of an October week, two unsettling incidents ruffle his calm. Cassia faces the threat of eviction from her apartment because of a secret pet (and Micah’s reactions to this later turn out to be unsatisfactory); and a teenaged boy turns up claiming that Micah is his father.

It is always such a pleasure to read a book by Anne Tyler, and this one has you smiling all the way through, unless you are laughing out loud or saying “oh, dear” or “oh, my”. Nothing terribly dramatic happens, but Tyler’s special talent is making ordinary lives shine.

Tyler is wonderful at character description: “She was so sharp-edged, both literally and figuratively – a shrill, vivacious mosquito of a girl, all elbows and darting movements, and it was a wonder she’d given a glance at a stick-in-the-mud like Micah.”

Micah is quirky but believable and his inner monologue is often particularly entertaining: the remarks he resists making, and the Traffic God who comments on his impeccable driving are two examples.

His bewilderment at human interaction is palpable: “Sometimes when he was dealing with people, he felt like he was operating one of those claw machines on a boardwalk, those shovel things where you tried to scoop up a prize but the controls were too unwieldy and you worked at too great a remove.”

Family gatherings are Tyler’s specialty: “A mahogany side table held a lamp and a pair of pruning shears and a bottle of nail polish. No doubt the living room was equally disorganized, but you couldn’t tell, because it was filled wall-to-wall with people… The general impression, as always, was tumult: noisy, merry, unkempt people wearing wild colors, dog barking, baby crying, TV blaring, bowls of chips and dips already savaged.” As always, many of her characters are a little eccentric, but their observations on life are insightful at the same time as being amusing. If only this dose of Tyler’s magic had been longer…
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by Penguin Books Australia.

SueB

Second chances
Micah Mortimer, aka the Tech Hermit, is just living out his life, mostly clueless, This is a wonderful book for our times, full of truths, and half-truths about our lives. I just felt it was uplifting and a really good read.

Other books by Anne Tyler at BookBrowse

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