Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler

You have to wonder what goes through the mind of a man like Micah Mortimer. He lives alone; he keeps to himself; his routine is etched in stone.

A new book by Anne Tyler is always something to cheer about, so I was eager to pick up her latest novel, which was also long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Redhead by the Side of the Road is the story of Micah Mortimer, aka Tech Hermit, the handle he uses for his business fixing people's home computers. So I guess you might call him a nerd. 

Micah isn’t what you’d call outgoing, but he’s still helpful to clients and the people who inhabit the apartment block he lives in and where he’s also caretaker. He gets on with his family, and has a girlfriend, Cass, a school teacher. But he’s a slave to routine, a fanatically tidy person who doesn’t like change. And like so many men like Micah, he doesn’t share his feelings. 

In the course of the novel, two major incidents rock Micah’s world: the son of his first girlfriend drops by, thinking Micah might be his father; and Cass dumps him. Micah finds himself taking stock.

Redhead by the Side of the Road is a very slim book, lacking the range of characters and expanded time-frame of say, A Spool of Blue Thread, also by Tyler and which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize in 2015. And as such it seems at first like a less substantial read.

But like her previous fiction, Tyler shows such a knack with seemingly ordinary people. What makes them the way they are, what breaks their heart, what makes them happy. They’re not heroes in anybody else’s stories, not earth-shakers or empire-builders. But they are often very remarkable in other ways. I’m always happy to visit planet Tyler to meet someone new.

Posted by JAM

Catalogue link: Redhead by the Side of the Road