About Anne Tyler’s Redhead by the Side of the Road

Here’s a book to warm the heart.  Every character is flawed but within likeable parameters and Tyler’s acceptance and fondness embraces large variations of personalities.  The best is Micah Mortimer, the lead character. Following him is like accompanying a dear fellow and bolstering him, rooting for him to open his eyes. It is so refreshing to have problems presented that aren’t dark, dead end, don’t require superhuman fortitude, but just honesty, perseverance, self-examination, gradually at least, an open mind and heart. And yet, the conflicts are serious, as timely now as in the past—the need for a family, the desire to know who your parents were, to find your own path, to be different and accepted, to love and be loved.

Central is that Micah Mortimer loses lovers and doesn’t know why. He wonders what’s his flaw, and is in search of the answer. One wonders why, too.  He seems to be the kindest, sweetest guy, deserving of better working positions than computer troubleshooter and apartment manager. Then, as it occurs in real life, we come to know him and realize, Ah, yes.  Micah is a perfectionist, obsessive compulsive, whose sweet nature is combined with micro-management.  He has a definite, wonderful urge to be kind, to help others, but that loving trait is accompanied by a too sharp eye for small faults, and a too rigid schedule for comfort. 

Tyler’s explanation for Micah’s nature is really a careful, believable blend of nature and nurture. We see him interact with customers, with neighbors, with former lovers, and with his family.  Contrasting Micah’s nature is his boisterous, chaotic, creative family who reveal his uniqueness.  He loves them dearly just as they are but wants and needs order and quiet.  They accept him, too, and his need for control. This need may have been innate, but made more solid perhaps by the environment—his family.  So, Micah comes across as a normal person, somewhere on the spectrum of human, who needs to pare down his control a bit. 

A personality quirk that weakens the romantic element is Micah’s apparent capability of loving any decent woman, moving from one to the next with a similar level of hope and emotion.  Perhaps that makes the work even more realistic.  We can, after all, love many people and not all grand passions are healthy ones. Tyler’s ways of showing love in the perception of another is very touching.  I’m tempted to say it’s also the feminine approach.  Micah notes the tiny details of a person that please him, just the sight or sound.  It’s the way we all react surely to something we love, the grace of it, the feeling it brings to us.  Tyler captures that beautifully.

One slightly strange plot line is that a young man appears who believes Micah is his father from a limited liaison with his mother.   Micah knows it isn’t true—and the reader knows—but Micah doesn’t  totally disillusion the needy young man. Instead, he assumes a helping role, rather fatherly.  That’s an act many kind people do, sometimes for a community of children.

In the world of this novel, we don’t lose people. Lives intersect and intersect later in a new way.  Things change but not drastically and horribly. Tyler’s work suggests we may have a chance to understand, to explain, to regain relationships and broaden our sense of self.

Each time I read a Tyler book, I recall how much I enjoy her novels, her characters, her respect for them and people in general.  I’m always fortified by her view on life. (Mary Oliver’s poetry does that for me, too.  Sees the beauty in the small and the whole). I want to write books like this.  A wonderful group of normal people, all important and lovable, and nothing false or overwrought, nothing dire and dark, subtle, gentle, and moderate in today’s world.  We write what we know and write toward what we wish to know and believe.