Both suffer from “nerves,” and while they recover separately, Jenny is sent off to live with her church-going cousins. She is especially fascinated by one unconventional woman, who precipitates a crisis between Jenny’s troubled parents. She candidly relates the events of 1958-59, when she was a precocious 13-year-old and spied on the neighbors of her small Southern town. Lee Smith’s novella Blue Marlin (Blair, digital galley) is short, sweet and very funny, thanks to narrator Jenny.
The Redhead at the Side of the Road - the title’s an apt metaphor - proves good company when staying home. The writing is easy, the tone warm and familiar.
His four older sisters, all waitresses, are much more fun, and a family dinner at a table with a ping-pong net is one of those hilarious set pieces Tyler does so well. What is he thinking? Tyler writes oddball characters who are as endearing as they are exasperating, although Micah’s obtuseness would test anyone’s patience. A rich runaway college student shows up on his doorstep claiming that Micah is his father, and his longtime girlfriend, a patient fourth-grade teacher, dumps him after an insensitive remark proves the final straw. Tyler devises two events to shake up Micah’s life.
No, it would take more than a deadly virus to open Micah’s eyes to the world beyond the tip of his nose. He already is obsessively tidy about cleaning the dreary basement flat he gets in exchange for occasional handyman duties, and the stay-in policy is another excuse not to interact with the tenants or his large, messy family. I expect he would still run every morning around his Baltimore neighborhood, only with a mask, and instead of making house calls to fix computers, his “Tech Hermit” business would be by phone. The 44-year-old protagonist of Anne Tyler’s new novel The Redhead at the Side of the Road (Knopf Doubleday, digital galley) is already mired in his mostly solitary routines. I can’t help but wonder how Micah Mortimer would react to the stay-at-home restrictions of the current pandemic.
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