On the face of it, this story is just so darned ordinary, but Anne Tyler manages to turn the ordinary, the mundane, into extraordinary and imaginative, with her observations on the minutiae of life.Ĥ4 year old Micah lives alone in a basement flat, a very well ordered place it has to be said, this is a man who likes routine.
Just a moving story about a person who marches to his own beat. The meaning of the title suggests the former and Micah's way of life does hold him back in many ways, but this portrait of him is undeniably a compassionate one. And if this book does indeed have a message, I truly cannot decide if it is a caution against perfectionism and rigidity, or instead an appeal for understanding of those oddballs who have their daily lives planned down to the second. It is so tempting to look for hidden "messages" in books. It reminds me of several other books that are intimate character portraits of outsiders who struggle to connect with other humans - Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, A Man Called Ove, for example - but this one is subtler and less sensationalist than either of those (don't get me wrong, I really loved both those books). Even his somewhat finicky girlfriend is growing tired of all his ways. Micah exasperates those around him, though he cannot understand their frustration with him. Everything in his house and in his life has its place and each day is part of a strict cleaning schedule. He's a self-employed techie with a business aptly called 'Tech Hermit'. It's a book about a middle-aged man called Micah Mortimer. A novella, I imagine, though I don't know the exact word count.
Redhead by the Side of the Road is a little book with a lot of quiet power. Well, I don't know if it's because I'm on my way to becoming a boring old person these days, but I have been wholly charmed by both of the two Tyler books I've read as an adult. I remember rolling my eyes, along with my classmates, because we were forced to read something so insufferably boring about everyday people living their lives and interacting with each other. I remember being in my early teens in school and our English teacher making us read Anne Tyler's Digging to America. The only place I went wrong, he writes, was expecting things to be perfect.
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