Redhead by the Side of the Road

Redhead by the Side of the Road: A Novel

By: Anne Tyler / Narrated By: MacLeod Andrews

Length: 4 hrs and 50 mins

Has the feel of a novel outline rather than a fleshed-out novel

I’ve kinda got a thing for Anne Tyler novels—they’ve usually got quirky, stuck-in-their-ways characters who learn how to live. And probably her best novel ever was the touching and devastating Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (NOT available as an audiobook… Booooooo!!!) which sorta set the bar rather high for further books written by her. The Accidental Tourist made the cut also (Tho’ in the audiobook, I can’t stand the usually good narrator).

But if you’ve read both of those, especially the latter, you might be disappointed with this, Redhead by the Side of the Road as we have the clueless and somewhat anal Micah Mortimer (Just like the protagonist in The Accidental Tourist, tho’ he’s not emotionally numb) who’s been given chances at love but has never succeeded in a relationship. “Quirky, stuck-in-their-ways” character once again. The book chronicles his comfortable relationship with Cass, an elementary school teacher, and his job as a tech guy interacting with quirky clients, and his job as building superintendent interacting with quirky tenants. All is upended when Cass finds she might be evicted for having a cat in her apartment, plus a young man, Brink, shows up, wanting to know if Micah is his dad.

And that’s about it.

There’s some back and forth, and some lovely writing at parts, but for the most part the characters weren’t too well fleshed-out (They didn’t have many experiences even tho’ we’re given a few memories for Micah of failed relationships), there’s not much story (Cass dumps Micah since he’s all set in his ways, isn’t empathetic to her plight, and doesn’t ask her to move in with him), and to say that the denouement was abrupt and fraught with “SUDDEN!!!” Insight is an understatement like all get-out. Micah wraps up the whole book with such a beautifully wrought statement of self-awareness that one is left scratching one’s head: That is NOT the Micah that Tyler wrote through the entire book.

MacLeod Andrews does a good enough job, actually, he was jolly good. But he doesn’t have much to work with—The story isn’t filled with intense emotions or devastating dilemmas, plus a narrator can have a lot of fun when all one is given to work with is quirky quirky quirky characters. Andrews connotes just the right amount of reserve when narrating Micah, but not so much that we don’t feel SOMEthing for the character.

Good little book, but it’s certainly little; it’s as tho’ Tyler just wanted to get one out there to soothe our current societally blighted souls. So I do appreciate this little ditty in that it took my mind off the big bad world.

I just wish there were more lines like the one Micah uses at the end. If he’d had a bigger struggle, the end would’ve been delicious.