He’s puzzled when he turns up to a family gathering - he is the youngest of four children - and finds his sisters and in-laws taking the mickey out of him. Micah, however, doesn’t have enough self-awareness to realise that this is what he does. He might not be able to control how other people behave, so he has spent his life focusing on the things he can control - making sure his house is spotlessly clean, doing a job that doesn’t challenge him too much, keeping Cass at arm’s length because if he makes a real commitment he could potentially get hurt. For all his stability and level-headedness, you only have to scratch the surface to realise that Micah is not a particularly confident person. Character-driven novelĪs a character-driven novel, this is a perceptive look at a seemingly happy middle-aged man whose life is thrown off kilter. Both events test Micah’s view of himself - and his life. In Micah’s case, two things happen: an 18-year-old preppy-looking kid turns up on his doorstep claiming Micah is his father, and his girlfriend Cass breaks off their relationship because he does little to help her when she fears she might become homeless.
Of course, this wouldn’t be an Anne Tyler novel without something extraordinary happening to an ordinary person, throwing things into disarray and causing characters to reassess their situations. But this is his life and he has no cause to examine it. He is cordial and friendly to people, but he’s not social and has no male friends. He also moonlights as the super at the apartment building in which he lives. He makes his living as a computer technician, running his own business called TECH HERMIT, where he makes home visits to sort people’s computer and printer issues out. He has a “woman friend”, Cass, who teaches fourth grade, but they live in separate apartments and lead fairly separate lives, only catching up on a semi-regular basis for meals, overnight stays and weekend outings.ĭay-to-day, he follows a relatively regimented schedule - going for a run at 7.15am every morning, for instance, and cleaning his basement flat according to a rigid routine.
It tells the story of Micah Mortimer, a 41-year-old man, who does his best to live a quiet, understated life in which he never puts a foot wrong.
Fiction – paperback Chatto & Windus 178 pages 2020.Īnne Tyler’s latest novel, Redhead by the Side of the Road, is classic Anne Tyler: absorbing, perceptive and warm-hearted, but underpinned by a current of pathos.
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