This sudden turn of events makes him look into himself at old assumptions and wrongs done him, and reach out to people from his past and present to make sense of what is going on. He thinks Micah – the love of his mother Lorna Bartell’s life, she says – is his real father and hopes for commiseration, maybe even accommodation.Īnne Tyler is a veteran author of more than twenty novelsīefore Micah can truly register Brink’s existence, Cass, worried about being evicted from her apartment and upset that he has not asked her to move in with him, tells Micah it is best they break up. Brink, 18 and “sick of being wrong all the time”, has run away from home. Just as we think we have him down pat, a stranger appears on his doorstep. He talks to himself in foreign accents while cleaning house and imagines a Traffic God looking down approvingly as he cruises around on calls, pulls to a perfect stop at the lights, or abides by the rules even with no one watching. Tyler draws Micah out slowly in this slim novel and as we warm to him, we begin to wonder if there is more to him than meets the eye. That is the reason most of us, Janes and Joes leading ordinary lives, can relate to the protagonist in Anne Tyler’s Redhead by the Side of the Road, one of the Booker 13. The worst one could say about Micah is that he is ordinary.

Tall, with not-so-good posture and a clamped-looking mouth, he reads mysteries and biographies from the free-book place and replaces them when done so as not to clutter the basement unit he gets to stay in for free for serving as superintendent at a small apartment building in a nondescript Baltimore neighbourhood. Unlucky with girls before, he and Cass have it “down to a system” after three years together. He likes repairing computers so he can be his own boss, has four sisters who are fond of him, finicky habits and all (he marks days for specific chores) and is comfortable with restful-to-look-at Cass. Micah, 43 on his next birthday, is not exactly a painful stick-in-the-mud. Meet Micah Mortimer, the Tech Hermit - also the name of his company - who likes things to be definite and fears making missteps on the road and everywhere else. At a time when nothing is certain, it is comforting to read about a man whose routine is etched in stone.

Redhead by the side of the road