The redhead on the side of the road6/10/2023 ![]() ![]() She thrives in big, creaky old houses bursting at the seams with people (even if only on special occasions) and provides detailed histories for her characters in lengthy, chapter-length flashbacks. Tyler tends to focus on the dynamics of large, middle-class American families– the relationships between parents and their children, the grudges between those children and their siblings, and the reverberations of generations past, despite a person’s best efforts to escape them. Redhead is no exception, despite its modest size and scope. ![]() Today, less than a year later, I’ve read all 22 of her novels, and felt the same peace each time I arrive at another ending. (A reliable source.) “I think you’ll like her,” he told me late last summer. I fell for Tyler and her soothing bibliography only recently, after she was recommended to me by a friend who happens to be this publication’s Chief Critic. That her endings have a consistency of tone is a hallmark of Tyler’s writing, and the reason Redhead By the Side of the Road–out April 7–is so well-timed. ![]() In this case, the recipient is Michah Mortimer, a “tall, bony man in his early forties” who owns a one-man tech support business. The latest novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Tyler, ends just as all her others have, which is to say it delivers upon its protagonist a moment of profound, much-deserved hope. ![]()
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