A tale of love and oddball humanity
Redhead by the Side of the Road
By Anne Tyler, Penguin Random House, $35
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What an absolute delight of a novel. I don't think I have ever read a book, seemingly about nothing, that I have enjoyed as much as this one. It's about Micah Mortimer, a man who lives in a basement.
He would be classified as a bit weird, as he lives his strictly regimented life as a janitor and IT guy. His highly organised existence is thrown into disarray when his girlfriend Cassia faces eviction and suddenly a teenage boy shows up on his doorstep claiming to be his son. It's all a bit much for a man who has his life carefully planned and under control.
Micah's rambunctious and utterly chaotic extended family are a foil to his fastidiousness, explaining, to a degree, his need for structure and order. Even his IT clients are fully formed characters under Tyler's deft writing. Paragraphs-long vignettes create a background population that exists to reflect the facets of Micah's personality, but you become just a little bit invested in every one of them.
The action takes place over only a few days and within eight chapters, but Tyler's writing is so spare, tight and to the point, you are comfortably carried along as Micah misunderstands and mis-steps his way to revelation. Everything and everyone is ordinary and recognisable and Tyler unwraps Micah and his quirks layer by layer to eventually reveal, well, how ordinary he actually is.
At its heart,
is a sweet love story, not just between Micah and Cassia, but also of oddball humanity in general, the muddles we make of our lives through assumptions and erroneous conclusions. Even the Redhead of the title is a character that exists through a lack of clarity. It's not a long tale, 178 pages, but its characters will continue to knock about in your head for days after you've put the book down. It's a wonderful little read that shows, once again, why Tyler has won the Pulitzer Prize and a swag of other trophies, as well as been nominated for just as many more, for her writing.
– Helen Van Berkel
While I was writing Unorthodox I was going through that delicate transition period that comes after leaving, where I was struggling to figure out what kind of person I was going to be, and what kind of life I was going to lead. Being forced to reflect on the past made me realise I was never going to be able to erase it, and that the past will always be a part of who I am. I eventually learned that this was not necessarily a bad thing, and I grew to accept it. Without the book to help me, it would have taken me much longer to achieve that realisation.
What are some of your favourite books and how have they influenced you?
I mention many of my favourites in the memoir, but I’ve also been a huge Charles Dickens fan for as long as I can remember. His books stood out because they often concerned young children who found themselves suddenly disadvantaged in life, and his writing was steeped in a sort of romantic melancholy. Of course, I can’t forget about Harry Potter .I caught on to the series as a teenager and it was such an escape for me. To this day I credit J.K. Rowling for ever surviving my adolescence in the Satmar community.
When did you start writing?
I started writing as soon as I started reading. There’s a reason writers write, and I think I understood that reason from a very young age. When I started writing, I felt like I had joined a club. I was engaged in an age-old process of reflection and creativity that tied me to the people I most admired; authors. In this way, writing made me feel less alone. It took me out of my small, limited world and made me feel part of the big picture.
How has your religion manifested in your life outside the Satmar Hasidic community?
I think my Jewishness has stayed with me largely because of my son, who identifies very positively with his ethnic and religious identity.
Seeing him take pleasure in Jewish holidays and customs has taught me not to reject the beneficial aspects of a culture just because it has negative associations for me. While I am still uncomfortable with the idea of “belonging” to a temple or community, I don’t want to deprive my son of that choice, and so I try to stay as open and flexible as possible.
Now that you’re free to delve into secular culture, what particular activities do you most enjoy?
That’s easy. I love being part of a literary community. The fact I don’t have to hide my books, or my love for them, is the best part about being free. I spend time in bookstores and attend readings, and it always feels like a celebration to me, because I know I would never have been able to take part in this were it not for my escape. I also love to travel, watch independent films, and visit art museums. The fact I can expand my intellectual horizons when I want to is still thrilling and new to me.
Have you had any further communication with your grandparents or the rest of your extended family?
This is a sensitive issue for me. When I left I changed my contact information and hid for a while because I was scared that they would force me to return. Later, when news of the book surfaced, I received a lot of hate mail from members in my family, and that was very hurtful. However, reading the abusive messages reminded me how lucky I was to have escaped the community and made me more grateful than ever that I had made the decision to leave it.
What would you most like readers to take away from the experience of reading this book?
I want people to think about how hard it can still be to grow up female in this day and age, because even though some of the experiences described in the book may strike you as extreme, I think all women can identify with the powerlessness I felt. A lot about how the Hasidic community conducts itself is a reflection on the greater society that allows it to do so, and I think attitudes towards multiculturalism need to change as a result. Justice for women needs to improve both in and outside of extreme religious cultures.