Tyler is an expert at fictionalising the life of middle class American families, and Redhead by the Side of the Road proves no exception. She is a former Pulitzer Prize winner, has been shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and was a participant in the Hogarth Shakespeare project which also saw the likes of Margaret Atwood, Howard Jacobsen, and Tracy Chevalier tackle modern interpretations of the bard’s best known works. Highly recommend this heartwarming novel.For those of you not familiar with Anne Tyler, Redhead by the Side of the Road is her 23rd novel. 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. And it’s not because he doesn’t love them enough. 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. 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. Tyler’s writing is perceptive and empathetic. When I think of a word to describe the effect of Tyler’s writing, one word always pops up : heartfelt. He has built his life around people he loves, and at this juncture to restart, rebuild! He is not sure he can. He is a good guy, he thinks, trying to do the right thing. Micah finds his life suddenly upended and he isn’t quite sure why.
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. 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. His main gig is being the superintendent of a Baltimore apartment building.
He’s got a side-gig as the Tech Hermit where he helps various technologically challenged folks with their issues. This is a story of people – most are – but Tyler tells them so much better than everyone else. So I picked up “Redhead by the side of the Road” and like it even better! I recently read Ladder of Years and liked it very much.
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