Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler

Redhead by the Side of the Road
Written by Anne Tyler
Published by Chatto & Windus, an imprint of Vintage

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Tyler (who is now in her 79th year) has written another short but delightful book, celebrating the quirky, the ordinary, and life in the small neighbourhood.

Micah Mortimer is 44 and a perfectionist. He lives on his own in a tidy, sterile basement flat in a small neighbourhood in Baltimore. He has a girlfriend, whom he keeps at arm’s length, and sisters with families, so has plenty of social interaction when he feels he needs it. His one-man tech business, called Tech Hermit, is rather quaint in many ways. An ordinary life it seems, but one that the author gradually and seamlessly pulls the reader into, until we feel so much for these characters and their lives. Things change, of course they do, there is a catalyst, but the author treads so carefully that the reader has a point of view and is invested in the outcome. Turn off the computer and read this in one sitting.

If you haven’t read Anne Tyler before, you are in for a treat! The City Library has many previous novels by Anne Tyler in Fiction Stack. Try The Accidental Tourist, Back When We Were Grownups, or A Spool of Blue Thread (her twentieth novel, and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015). They are all good.

Check out Redhead by the Side of the Road in our catalogue. 

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