Redhead by the Side of the Road - by Anne Tyler (Paperback)

About the Book

"Micah Mortimer is a creature of habit. A self-employed tech expert, superintendent of his Baltimore apartment building, cautious to a fault behind the steering wheel, he seems content leading a steady, circumscribed life. But one day his routines are blown apart when his woman friend (he refuses to call anyone in her late thirties a 'girlfriend') tells him she's facing eviction, and a teenager shows up at Micah's door claiming to be his son. These surprises, and the ways they throw Micah's meticulously organized life off-kilter, risk changing him forever"--

Book Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - BOOKER PRIZE NOMINEE - From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a sparkling novel about misperception, second chances, and the sometimes elusive power of human connection.

Micah Mortimer is a creature of habit. A self-employed tech expert, superintendent of his Baltimore apartment building, cautious to a fault behind the steering wheel, he seems content leading a steady, circumscribed life.

But one day his routines are blown apart when his woman friend (he refuses to call anyone in her late thirties a "girlfriend") tells him she's facing eviction, and a teenager shows up at Micah's door claiming to be his son. These surprises, and the ways they throw Micah's meticulously organized life off-kilter, risk changing him forever.

An intimate look into the heart and mind of a man who finds those around him just out of reach, and a funny, joyful, deeply compassionate story about seeing the world through new eyes, Redhead by the Side of the Road is a triumph, filled with Anne Tyler's signature wit and gimlet-eyed observation.

Review Quotes

THE BOOKER PRIZE NOMINEE

"Anne Tyler has every gift a great novelist needs: intent observation, empathy and language both direct and surprising. She has unembarrassed goodness as well."
--New York Times Book Review

"If ever there was a perfect time for a new Anne Tyler novel, it's now--and this one doesn't disappoint . . . Heartwarming and very funny--one of Tyler's best yet."
--People

"Delicate and moving . . . Tyler's voice remains as vital as ever."
--Vanity Fair

"[A] heartwarming balm for jangled nerves. . . . Tyler's novels are always worth scooping up."
--NPR

"Entrancing . . . Tyler is an American Vermeer whose canvases keep opening whole worlds within compact frames. . . . As novelist Marilynne Robinson has observed, realism has been so predominant a literary style 'that it is easy to forget it is a style.' One of its flawless practitioners is Anne Tyler, whose fiction maps the sea changes of her characters in carefully calibrated, deceptively understated prose . . . Tyler is a keen-eyed but tenderhearted social observer."
--O, The Oprah Magazine

"Affecting . . . Tyler has the rare ability to evoke the ordinary with particularity."
--The New Yorker

"There's always good reason to celebrate a new Anne Tyler novel. . . . Who else can make words sparkle with humor and tenderness in quite this way? . . . Hilarious and poignant. . . . A master at the small domestic moments that stand in for large and universal truths, Tyler never disappoints. This is a wonderful novel."
--Boston Globe

"A work that makes you want to live more attentively . . . [Tyler's characters] are imagined with a curiosity and compassion seldom found in contemporary prose."
--Financial Times

"Redhead by the Side of the Road is simply a delight . . . Tyler makes her craft look easy again."
--The Missourian

"Pitch-perfect . . . Tyler is now, as she has long been, at the height of her powers."
--Washington City Paper

"What a joy it is to open a new novel from Anne Tyler . . . The qualities that have served her and her readers so well are still strong in her fiction--telling details, realistic dialogue and interactions, the rare ability to look at 'ordinary' people and find rich depths of humanity that enlighten us all. She presents all this with just the right mix of humor and pathos. It's no wonder her books ring true to so many people."
--News & Record (Greensboro, NC)

"Exquisite . . . Tyler's wit and humanity seem to be as vigorous as ever."
--Anniston Star (Alabama)

"A fully realised world full of dry humour . . . Each character is deftly drawn in a few lines."
--The Times (UK)

"Another gem from Anne Tyler . . . Tyler has won so many plaudits over the past 50 odd years that it's hard to think of new superlatives to add . . . Tyler's ability to make you care about her characters is amazing, and never more so than here."
--Observer (UK)

"Delightful . . . Tyler is a magician . . . You finish her novels feeling closer to life, and closer to other people."
--Mail on Sunday (UK)

"Anne Tyler may, in the end, prove to be one of the most influential novelists of her generation . . . Her books are so irresistibly readable that it's startling to realise what technical marvels they often are."
--Daily Telegraph

"Reading Anne Tyler is always pure pleasure, and Redhead by the Side of the Road is the author at her best. This joyful book is a powerful reminder of how much we need human connection."
--BookPage (starred)

"Tyler's warmly comedic, quickly read tale, a perfect stress antidote, will delight her fans and provides an excellent 'first' for readers new to this master of subtle and sublime brilliance . . . Perfectly modulated, instantly enmeshing, heartrending, funny, and redemptive."
--Booklist

"Characteristically tender . . . Suffused with feeling and very moving."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred)

About the Author

ANNE TYLER was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She is the author of more than twenty novels. Her twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2015. Her eleventh novel, Breathing Lessons, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1989. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.