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Redhead By the Side of the Road review – another gem from Anne Tyler

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/30/anne-tyler-redhead-by-the-side-of-the-road-review

A mundane life is once again thrown into turmoil in the US writer’s best novel in some time

Anne Tyler has won so many plaudits over the past 50 odd years that it’s hard to think of new superlatives to add. But reading this enjoyable novel – her 23rd – it struck me that there can’t be a writer, of either gender, who creates more engaging or multi-dimensional men. Aren’t some of her most memorable and satisfying novels those where she plumbs the male human heart and psyche with all of her customary tenderness and honesty? Who can forget Saint Maybe’s self-lacerating Ian Bedloe, or the poles-apart brothers from Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant? Or – probably my favourite – the heart-wrenched Macon Leary in The Accidental Tourist?

And now – chiming eerily at least in name with Macon – here’s fortysomething Micah, blue-eyed, with “not-so-good posture”, clad in jeans and a “partially erased looking” brown leather jacket. After he walked away from an IT startup, Micah now runs Tech Hermit and runs around the neighbourhood fixing computer problems for old ladies who – and you’d be right to bet Tyler mines this for full comic potential – don’t know what a modem is or does.

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