by Anne Tyler
From the beloved and best-selling Anne Tyler, a sparkling new novel about misperception, second chances, and the sometimes elusive power of human connection.
Micah Mortimer is a creature of habit. A self-employed tech expert, superintendent of his Baltimore apartment building, cautious to a fault behind the steering wheel, he seems content leading a steady, circumscribed life. But one day his routines are blown apart when his woman friend (he refuses to call anyone in her late thirties a "girlfriend") tells him she's facing eviction, and a teenager shows up at Micah's door claiming to be his son. These surprises, and the ways they throw Micah's meticulously organized life off-kilter, risk changing him forever. An intimate look into the heart and mind of a man who finds those around him just out of reach, and a funny, joyful, deeply compassionate story about seeing the world through new eyes, Redhead by the Side of the Road is a triumph, filled with Anne Tyler's signature wit and gimlet-eyed observation.
"[T]ender and rueful... These chapters are painfully poignant—thank goodness Tyler is too warmhearted an artist not to give her sad-sack hero at least the possibility of a happy ending. Suffused with feeling and very moving." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[P]erceptive...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." - Publishers Weekly
"Tyler's warmly comedic, quickly read tale, a perfect stress antidote, will delight her fans and provides an excellent 'first' for readers new to this master of subtle and sublime brilliance...Tyler's perfectly modulated, instantly enmeshing, heartrending, funny, and redemptive tale sweetly dramatizes the absurdities of flawed perception and the risks of rigidity." - Booklist
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Anne Tyler's 50 Year Writing Career
In March 2013, Anne Tyler announced the title of her upcoming novel in an interview with the BBC. She also noted that she didn't want to finish another novel - not even this one. She described the book as a "sprawling family saga," which starts with the present generation and then moves back, one generation at a time. Fortunately, she realized she was only interested in three generations. Before this revelation, she figured A Spool of Blue Thread could go on long enough that she might die before its publication! That way she wouldn't have the hassle of the editing, polishing, promoting and worrying if the book was any good or not.
This sounds like the pressure of thinking up something new and original, combined with her obvious penchant for ...
It is among the commonplaces of education that we often first cut off the living root and then try to replace its ...
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