Book Review: "The Redhead by the Side of the Road" by Anne Tyler

I used to read some Anne Tyler books back when I was studying my undergraduate degree and mainly because I wanted to learn her style of writing such well-constructed character-based pieces. The character studies I used to do on the people that populated her books came flowing back to me in this one entitled "The Redhead by the Side of the Road". It was like experiencing it all over again. The writing style is cautious in what it tells us about the character - only as much as is relevant to the time and place. The character’s decisions are always based on their character type rather than what the writer thinks that they should be doing. Let’s take a look at what it is about then.

Micah is a man in his early forties, he has a ‘woman friend’ named Cass Slade. They do not live together and Micah lives on his own. He’s (in his own words) a ‘glorified handyman’ who cannot seem to make a relationship last. Every single one of his last girlfriends have left him out of what he thinks is boredom. Micah maintains a strict schedule of running every morning at 7:15am and then returning to shower and work - he has particular days for cleaning particular parts of his house (which his four older sisters make fun of him for). Micah’s world seems perfect and yet, incredibly lonely. That is until an eighteen year old boy named Brink turns up on his doorstep claiming to be his son. Slowly after this, Micah’s world starts to break down, things turn awry and his entire life is flipped around. Not being able to tell whether this boy is telling the truth or not, Micah has let himself open up to something that is potentially dangerous. He has officially run out of options - he lets Brink into his house. The biggest mistake he will make.

The book is written in classic Anne Tyler style with various critiques on how we live our lives intertwined with other people but then again, we are so cut off from one another that we end up losing the empathy we thought we had for someone else. The more rigidly we stick to something that is not compatible with someone else, the more risk we have of losing that person. However, it also shows us how everyone in our world is drifting apart. This book demonstrates just how alone Micah really is. He cuts himself off from having other male friends, he does not really talk to anyone unless he has to and most of the time he is simply stuck within his own world so much that we as readers must question whether we ever get to see his true nature.

Micah is forced to confront his realities and question what he really wants from another person. Through this, we can definitely see that Micah is looking to improve himself for the good of his remaining relationships. The question is whether Brink coming into his life has been the catalyst for this and what would have happened if Brink never showed up at all. Would Micah have ever changed his ways? Probably not.

I adored this book and read the whole thing in one sitting. It was great to read some Anne Tyler again and seriously has made my morning a little bit better overall. An amazing study into the mind of a very modern and realist character, Anne Tyler seems to take inspiration from the mind of Virginia Woolf when it comes to creating realism on a scale we have never seen before.