dailyBooks - Redhead by the Side of the Road--A novel by Anne Tyler--Conversation Starters

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Anne Tylers

Redhead by the Side of the Road

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Introducing Redhead by the Side of the Road

A nn Tyler is known for her sharp and acute observations of the many facets of human behavior and incorporating them into her stories. 'Redhead by the side of the road' is the story of the protagonist, Micah Mortimer. He is a forty-three-year-old man who lives alone but doesn't consider himself lonely. He is a well-disciplined person who follows his routine rigorously and religiously.

He barely manages to make a living out of his company, Tech Hermit. He is the sole employee and runs an on-call service related to technology. He lives rent-free in the basement apartment of a small Baltimore building in exchange for working the night hours as a caretaker of the building. His moonlighting job includes fixing and repairing broken switches as well as taking out the trash. His domestic chores are strictly timetabled. Micah was once the family hero who was the first person ever to go to college. He walked away from an IT startup and now runs around the neighborhood, fixing computer problems. His clients include many old ladies who aren't abreast of the technological aspects and find themselves riddled with the simplest of problems. He has prepared a manual titled "First, Plug It In," that sells modestly. He keeps to himself and even has timetabled activities for the week, such as Friday for vacuuming and Monday for floor-mopping, and so on.

Micah is eccentric at times and talks to himself with a fake French accent when he cooks. He also imagines that the traffic gods applauded his excellent motor skills when he was driving. But Micah does not consider himself to be an unhappy man. He was the youngest son in the family preceded by a gang of sisters who treat him with affectionate bafflement, teasing him as fussy. Micah cannot understand how his sisters and the rest of his family live in the constant chaos surrounding them.

He has a longtime girlfriend, a fourth-grade teacher named Cassia Slade. He believes that his relationship with her as grown and matured. But they live apart. His seemingly mechanical and perfectly set life is disturbed due to two changes.

Micah's girlfriend is threatened with being thrown out of her own apartment. She is waiting for him to ask her to move in. But Micah doesn't realize this. She jokes about spending the days in her grandfather's car when she informs him about the eviction. Micah jokes along, saying that his car was always available for her and didn't get the point. To his surprise and no one else's Cassia Slade breaks up with him.

The second change was that a teenage boy arrives at his doorstep, claiming to be his biological son. His name is Brink, and he assures Micah that he was the son of Micah's ex-flame, Lorna. Swiftly dismissing this possibility, Micah invites Brink in for a chat, only to find that Brink has managed to settle in and spend the night in the spare room.

Micah becomes the channel for Brink, reconnecting back with his parents. He finally opens up about the problems he is facing at college. Micah learns that his perception of his and Laura's college relationship was far from accurate.

Micah feels inept but unsure as to how he might have behaved differently. He suddenly begins to reassess his life and decisions, to understand the hollowness growing around him. The ache becomes difficult to ignore when he realizes that he was really missing Cass. His conversations with Lorna, who has been trying to trace Brink, force him to confront his troubled romantic history. Micah's initial response is mild indignation. He is reassuring himself that he has worked to be a good person while always choosing to learn from his mistakes. But as the story goes ahead, he comes to suspect that he has unconsciously led his life in a manner calculated to keep the human connection at a bare minimum. His realization turns once latent feelings of loneliness into something more acute.

The novel offers the portrait of a man who has consciously built a self-contained solitary world for himself. However, when the world really leaves him to be on his own, he needs others to provide a form of disruption to his orderly routines. This causes him to imagine others around him when there isn't anyone and make fictional friends. He jogs every morning and mistook a fire hydrant by the road for a redhead that he always found standing beside the road. While many of us long for a special kind of solace found in being entirely alone, an essential aspect of human nature is maintaining some form of human contact. This will undoubtedly lead to disorder or even chaos. Still, part of the joy of living is not being able to foretell what such interactions will bring. This novel shows that Tyler's simple story can provide a startlingly, timely message.

Introducing the Author