Redhead by the Side of the Road
A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOKER PRIZE GEM
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4.0 • 105 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
*A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOKER PRIZE GEM*
A perfect love story for imperfect people.
Micah Mortimer measures out his days running errands for work, maintaining an impeccable cleaning regime and going for runs (7:15, every morning). He is in a long-term relationship with his woman friend Cassia, but they live apart. His carefully calibrated life is regular, steady, balanced.
But then the order of things starts to tilt. Cassia is threatened with eviction, and when a teenager shows up at Micah's door claiming to be his son, he is confronted with another surprise he seems poorly equipped to handle.
Can Micah, a man to whom those around him always seem just out of reach, find a way back to his perfectly imperfect love story?
**LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2020**
'Anne Tyler takes the ordinary, the small, and makes them sing' Rachel Joyce
'She knows all the secrets of the human heart' Monica Ali
'A masterly author' Sebastian Faulks
'I love Anne Tyler. I've read every single book she's written' Jacqueline Wilson
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A fastidious everyman weathers a spate of relationship stresses in this compassionate, perceptive novel from Tyler (Clock Dance). Micah Mortimer, 43, makes house calls for his Tech Hermit business and moonlights as the superintendent of his Baltimore apartment building, where the residents observe his regimented routine and wonder, through Tyler's gossip-inflected narration, "Does he ever stop to consider his life?" The disruptions begin with a call from his schoolteacher girlfriend, Cassia Slade, who is in a panic because she is facing eviction. Then college freshman Brink Adams shows up on his stoop and claims to be his son. Micah knows it isn't true, because he never slept with Brink's mother, Lorna, an old girlfriend, but he tolerates the languid, starry-eyed kid who claims to look up to him for living a working-class life and who fixated on a photo of Micah kept by Lorna. After Micah tries to put Brink in touch with Lorna, he disappears. When Cassia dumps him for not immediately offering to let her move in, Micah descends into a funk that just might push him to prove himself worthy of her companionship. While Micah's cool indifference occasionally feels like a symptom of Tyler's spare, detached style, his moments of growth bring satisfaction. This quotidian tale of a late bloomer goes down easy.
