Books: “Redhead by the Side of the Road” by Anne Tyler

There’s nothing particularly interesting about Micah (rhymes with “Leica”), the protagonist of Anne Tyler’s 2020 novel “Redhead by the Side of the Road.” Micah runs Tech Hermit, a one-man computer repair shop in Baltimore, runs faithfully every day in cutoff jeans, and has a lady friend named Cass he refuses to call his GF. “No one over the age of 30 should be called a girl friend,” he tells himself.

Micah also micromanages his life to the nth degree. He cleans the kitchen the same

day every week, then starts in on the bathroom another day. If anything disrupts his routine, he tosses it away without giving it a second chance. That includes lady friends who usually wind up kicking him to the curb.

His carefully prescribed life is disrupted when a college kid named Brink turns up at his doorstep, claiming to be his son. Then Cass gives him the gas. Then an old GF reappears, Brink’s mother Lorna, causing him to look hard at his rigid way of living and what he’s missed out on.

This is not Anne Tyler’s strongest book, but it doesn’t really need to be. If you like her stuff, reading it is like having Camomile tea. She has such a gift for portraying a certain time and place—Baltimore in the 2010s—it’ll feel calming and familiar, even if you’ve never lived in Baltimore.

You just may recognize Micah and his family as the people you grew up with and love and share holiday dinners with. Unpretentious. Solid as an oak. Just like the author herself. Tyler fans, rejoice.