- Published: 30 March 2021
- ISBN: 9781529112450
- Imprint: Vintage
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 192
- RRP: $26.00
Redhead by the Side of the Road
A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOKER PRIZE GEM











- Published: 30 March 2021
- ISBN: 9781529112450
- Imprint: Vintage
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 192
- RRP: $26.00
Tyler’s perfectly modulated, instantly enmeshing, heartrending, funny, and redemptive tale sweetly dramatizes the absurdities of flawed perception and the risks of rigidity
Booklist
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
Compassionate, perceptive
Publishers Weekly
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 . . . In Micah, she’s created a man to puzzle and worry about, to ache and to root for
Julie Myerson, Observer
Bursting with vitality and variety, it's a tour de force . . . 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
Peter Kemp, Sunday Times
Tyler is a brilliant chronicler of human behavior because she understands that every part is something to someone . . . Yes, Micah Mortimer’s life is a small one, but as this period of extended quarantine and self-isolation is proving, whose isn’t? Though we have stripped our daily rituals down to their bare essentials, we remain as big and as loving and as scared and as frustratingly human as we were before the world outside screeched to a halt. Redhead By the Side of the Road is a delicate and moving reminder of this, and proves Tyler’s voice remains as vital as ever
Bobby Finger, Vanity Fair
Tyler’s piercing omniscience is on full, enthralling display
Bobby Finger, Vanity Fair
One of the most influential writers of her generation . . . Her books are so irresistibly readable that it's startling to realise what technical marvels they often are
Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph
A fully realised world full of dry humour . . . Each character is deftly drawn in a few lines . . . Tyler notes how each of us tries to create, with rules and little self-deceptions, the fragile edifice of a tolerable life. But also that sometimes we must smash it down in order to love
Janice Turner, The Times
Tyler is a writer who compels not through the complexities of plot but by the precision of her observations, her perfect pitch in the music of unremarkable lives
Clare Clark, Guardian
An excellent portrayal – amused but oddly tender – of a beta-male in crisis
Francesca Carrington, Sunday Telegraph
One of her best . . . Her intricate domestic dramas, full of melancholic, fractured families and lives suddenly disrupted by an unexpected event or longing, have a way of worming into your head and filling it with her humane vision. She writes with finesse, compassion and empathy about the raggedness of life
Sarah Crompton, Sunday Times
Anne Tyler has the ability to take the minutiae of characters’ lives and say wise things about the human condition that other writers can only dream of
Stylist
A new book from this wonderful writer is always a joy
Joanne Finney, Good Housekeeping
Anne Tyler is magnificent as she explores how we shape our lives
Kerry Fowler, Sainsbury's Magazine
Anne Tyler injects humour into this warm, sensitive novel…and her family portraits are, as always, vibrantly drawn
Hannah Beckerman, Sunday Express
As always, Tyler is a magician, able to conjure up, in a handful of sentences, such endlessly complicated things as the comical messiness of family life . . . You finish her novels feeling closer to life, and closer to other people
Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday
A cracker… Tyler’s touch is so assured you are held by every word… a pleasurable novel about intangible disappointments
Claire Allfree, Metro
A pleasure to read. It’s fractured, sad, strange and beautiful at the same time – like unreal real life
Literary Review
Who doesn’t love an offbeat love story? This one explores second chances, missteps and the importance of human connection. A touching celebration of the differences that make us all unique
Roisin Kelly, Sunday Times Style magazine
Almost unbearably poignant . . . a moving and perceptive story about one man’s inability to connect with others and his gradual move towards greater self-fulfilment
Charlotte Heathcote, Sunday Express
The literary queen of family relationships
Sarah Gilmartin, Irish Times
Comfort reading of the best sort – emotionally intelligent, finely detailed prose that leaves you feeling richer by the end of it
Sarah Gilmartin, Irish Times
The pre-eminent novelist of normal life . . . no one can match her evocation of the moments that build up a life
Hadley Freeman, Guardian Review
Tyler has every gift a great novelist needs: intent observation, empathy and language both direct and surprising. She has unembarrassed goodness as well. In this time of snark, preening, sub-tweeting and the showy torment of characters, we could use more Tyler
Amy Bloom, New York Times
Tyler is an expert at writing about the human heart and relationships
UK Press Syndication
Tyler has succeeded once more in lifting up what so often passes unseen in our lives and celebrating it
Philippa Williams, Lady
Neatly observed, thoroughly well-meaning, sharply attuned
Private Eye
Tyler makes you feel she really understands human beings in all their self-centredness and haplessness… reading it did me as much good as a week’s holiday in the sun
Jake Kerridge, Daily Express
Anne Tyler… is a remarkable writer. You might say she is like a landscape painter who keeps returning to the same scene in different weathers… her stories hold your interest and please because they are rooted in her curiosity about the way we live, feel and think. She is a masterly examiner of the unexamined life
Allan Massie, Scotsman
A book this lovely feels practically heaven-sent…. Crisp and direct, yet full of subtle touches, it’s a big-hearted tale of roads not taken — a delight from start to finish
Anthony Cummins, Daily Mail
Full of insight and sympathy. It is also highly absorbing — partly because of Tyler’s evocative style (when Micah considers his past, he is "visited by a kind of translucent scarf of a memory floating down upon him"), but mostly because of the intimacy with which she depicts the workings of Micah’s heart and mind...a quiet revelation
Matthew Adams, Financial Times
No one alive writes with more accuracy or truth. Anne Tyler takes the reader to the very heart of a life
Cressida Connolly, Oldie, *Novel of the Month*
In wonderful prose, Tyler drills deep into a very ordinary life, familiar struggles, and a quiet heroism
David Hoyle, Church Times
Anne Tyler's masterful new novel asks what it might take for an unhappy man to change his life... her longevity means that her work has become a record of a certain kind of America, especially of "the dailiness of women's lives", for the past half century.
Benjamin Markovits, Prospect
A quiet and beautiful story about human relationships, written with intent observation, empathy and humour
Citizen Femme
A timely reminder of what matters: kindness and love
Cressida Connolly, Spectator Books of the Year
This gloriously warm novel felt heaven-sent when it appeared in deepest lockdown
Anthony Cummins, Metro, *Christmas Gift Guide 2020*
A new book from this wonderful writer is always a joy... Tyler packs feeling and insight into every single sentence
Joanne Finney, Good Housekeeping, *Books of the Year*
I adored Redhead by the Side of the Road... It is so subtle, and so brilliant as are all Tyler's novels... Witty and warm, its only fault was that I wanted it to be twice as long!
Victoria Hislop, Daily Express, *Books of the Year*
Tender and beautifully paced
Heather Martin, Daily Express, *Books of the Year*
Compassionate and alert to the complexities in even the most ordinary lives, the book reminds us why, at 79, Tyler is held in such high regard
Claire Allfree, Daily Telegraph, *Books of the Year*
The qualities that have long won Tyler admiration and affection - wry humour, shrewd perception, characters who leap off the page with authenticity - are in generous supply
Julia Durman, Sunday Times, *Books of the Year*
You can't go wrong with Anne Tyler. She makes it look easy creating characters that feel so believable, so three-dimensional
Robbie Millen, The Times, *Books of the Year*
Anne Tyler really is the best. This reads as if she wrote it in one flawless seamless sitting. The sheer brilliance of making it all seem so effortless
Graham Norton
Tyler engrosses with the 'and-thenand-then' of domestic detail
Rose Tremain
I do think the world would probably be a better place if everyone read Anne Tyler . . . She's such a brilliantly empathetic writer - there's no 'them' and 'us' in Tyler's world - and she often writes from the perspective of the kind of people who you would walk past and barely notice in the street . . . Reading Tyler helps people to become better people, and I really fully believe that
Hadley Freeman, Good Housekeeping
Tyler's irresistibly readable 23rd novel follows Micah, a socially inept, OCD-ish IT man whose orderly life is turned upside down by the arrival of a son
Daily Telegraph Books of the Year
Tyler's affectionate and quietly observant novel reveals her deep empathy for the hidden struggles of everyday lives
Jane Shilling, Daily Mail
Another shrewd yet kindly novel about the mysterious business of family life by one of the world's great writers
Reader's Digest
A charmingly offbeat love story
Mail on Sunday, *Summer Reads of 2021*