Author : Anne Tyler
Genre : Contemporary
Publisher : Knopf
Pages : 192
Rating : ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2
I recently read Ladder of Years and liked it very much. So I picked up “Redhead by the side of the Road” and like it even better!
This is a story of people – most are – but Tyler tells them so much better than everyone else. Micah Mortimer is a creature of habit. He’s got a side-gig as the Tech Hermit where he helps various technologically challenged folks with their issues. His main gig is being the superintendent of a Baltimore apartment building. He is living a content, low-key life when trouble strikes in the form of Brink, a teenager who says he’s Micah’s son. Also Micah’s “woman-friend”, the gentle undemanding Cass is facing eviction from her own apartment, but Micah’s humorous retort on hearing of it rubs her the wrong way.
Micah finds his life suddenly upended and he isn’t quite sure why. He is a good guy, he thinks, trying to do the right thing. He has built his life around people he loves, and at this juncture to restart, rebuild! He is not sure he can.
When I think of a word to describe the effect of Tyler’s writing, one word always pops up : heartfelt. Heartachingly heartfelt. Tyler’s writing is perceptive and empathetic. Her characters have life-changing quandaries before them, quandaries such as you and I might face, and she describes her protagonists, their situations and the people around them so beautifully – and often with humor-laced descriptions – that one is moved.
Micah of course is an easy character to root for – a good kind man who cannot see where he’s failed the ones he loves. And it’s not because he doesn’t love them enough.
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.
Still all is well that ends well. Highly recommend this heartwarming novel.
