Redhead by the Side of the Road (Tyler) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Tyler wastes neither sentence nor scene…. [E]every quirky character… is a vintage Tyler portrait, fully drawn…. [with] an ending both nuanced and satisfying. A master at the small domestic moments that stand in for large and universal truths, Tyler never disappoints. This is a wonderful novel.
Boston Globe


Tyler’s brief novel covers just a few weeks in Micah’s life and it moves so quickly and seamlessly you might think it slight. You would be wrong. As in a short story, each observation, each detail, carries meaning… like so many Anne Tyler characters over the years, Micah Mortimer has trouble seeing what is right in front of his eyes. His inability to do so suffuses this poignant book with almost unbearable loneliness.
Minneapolis Star Tribune


[R]eading 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…. Tyler rarely disappoints, but this is her best novel in some time—slender, unassuming, almost cautious in places, yet so very finely and energetically tuned, so apparently relaxed, almost flippantly so, but actually supremely sophisticated.… Tyler’s ability to make you care about her characters is amazing, and never more so than here.
Guardian (UK)


it’s the wealth of brilliantly caught characters that’s her book’s greatest appeal…. Bursting with vitality and variety, it’s a tour de force display —funny, sharply aler  of Tyler’s acute enthralment with social interactions and idiosyncratic personalities.… [The]novel fizzes with the qualities—characters who almost leap off the page with authenticity, speech and body language wonderfully caught—that, for more than half a century, have won her such admiration and affection.
Times (UK)


A compassionate, perceptive novel…. 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


[W]armly comedic…. Radiantly polished and emotionally intricate…. Tyler’s perfectly modulated, instantly enmeshing, heartrending, funny, and redemptive tale sweetly dramatizes the absurdities of flawed perception and the risks of rigidity.
Booklist


A man straitjacketed in routine blinks when his emotional blinders are removed in Tyler's characteristically tender and rueful latest….Tyler is too warmhearted an artist not to give her sad-sack hero at least the possibility of a happy ending… very moving.
Kirkus Reviews