Redhead by the Side of the Road

I picked up Anne Tyler's new novel yesterday at the library and finished it an hour ago. Imagine my surprise when I opened my browser to find the link to my blog and saw that "Redhead by the Side of the Road" has just been

nominated to the Booker Prize long list! Often I've found the Booker titles to be dense and difficult yet Tyler's book is anything but. In fact, it's marvelous in its simplicity.


Some readers may be frustrated by Micah Mortimer, the forty-year-old reclusive computer repair guy who tends to be unnerved by any disruption to his circumscribed lifestyle. His wants and needs are minimal, his basement apartment sufficiently furnished in thrift store style, his weekly schedule for cleaning the house and visiting with his lady friend Cass inviolable.


But life is complicated and suddenly other people's messiness spills over onto Micah in ways that he isn't prepared to deal with, not because he's a bad person but because he's simply unaware and incurious. When Cass calls to tell him she may be evicted from her apartment for illegally having a cat on the premise, he logically advises that it's time for the cat to go. Simple. He never understood why she rescued Whiskers in the first place.


When a twenty-year-old college kid turns up on his doorstep looking for answers to his parentage, Micah offers him coffee and a denial but gets way more than he bargained for. And Micah's own family, a chaotic, intrusive, loving tribe of sisters, in-laws, nieces and nephews scares him to death. His visits are few and he always feels the need to escape.


Tyler's books have long been favorites of mine. Her novels are comfort food for the soul. Reading Anne Tyler is like cuddling up in front of a fire under your favorite quilt. She is a wise and compassionate chronicler of the human condition and a master at finding depths in her most quirky characters. We trust her to do this and she seldom fails to deliver.


So enjoy an afternoon or evening marveling as Tyler slowly allows readers to go with Micah into his past, to see the flaws in his memory, to witness his dawning realization that perhaps Donne was right, no man is an island. An apt lesson for our times. 

Cruel, Beautiful World

The title is apt, isn't it? Finally I can recommend a book that you can get right now. This tragic but gorgeously written novel by Caroline Leavitt has been languishing on my shelf for more than four years. I must have picked it up at some conference or book expo and thought I'd get to it when the spirit moved me. So glad it did.

The plot may sound like one that's been done a lot recently, especially in light of the Me Too movement but Leavitt actually got there first. The descriptive first sentence tells you exactly what happens,

 "Lucy runs away with her high school teacher, William, on a Friday, the last day of school, a June morning shiny with heat."

Can't you just see that Massachusetts day, "shiny with heat?" It will take Leavitt another three hundred fifty pages to dissect the repercussions of Lucy's rash decision, the pain that she'll cause her older sister Charlotte and her adopted mother Iris but it's in those pages that the beauty of this novel lies. It's as if

Leavitt has written several novellas within the whole as she deftly unspools each fully drawn character's backstory. She does an admirable job of characterizing William, his mesmerizing way with the students, his uncanny ability to zoom in on the least confident girl in the room with his blazing attention and make her feel brilliant.

We see how easily Lucy, a hapless romantic with dreams of being a writer, could fall under William's spell. After all, Charlotte was always the scholar in the family, the solid sister with her nose in her books, awarded a full ride to Brandeis. In her manic push toward graduation she took her eye off the ball, Lucy, the one she's felt responsible for since their parents died when she and Lucy were still small. 

And then there's the compelling Iris, a successful single woman on the cusp of retirement with dreams of world travel in her future. Imagine how her life was up-ended when she learned that she was the only living relative of her estranged father and his much younger wife. Could she place the girls in a home? Put them up for adoption? Of course not. And though the transition was rocky at first, the love they brought into her home was inestimable.

This finely crafted novel is psychologically astute in its examination of the slow uncoiling of an abusive personality and the difficulty of recognizing let alone leaving a dangerous relationship. Leavitt also ably characterizes the stages of grief through a young man trying to come to terms with his wife's untimely death and the mantle of guilt he's taken on. She looks at love in its many iterations and generously shares the joy with her readers until we come to accept that it is, in fact, both a cruel and beautiful world. 

America's Librarian Nancy Pearl Does What She Does Best

I'm so sorry to keep doing this to you but I have another recommendation that doesn't come out until Sept. Blame the Library Love Fest gang at Harper Collins. Last week I spent two and a half glorious hours in the company of over eighteen hundred avid, reading librarians in a webinar hosted by Virginia Stanley and her crew. They have been keeping me sane for months with their weekly video chats, touting the latest, greatest books coming down the pike. 

One of them is "The Writer's Library" by readers' advisor extraordinaire, Nancy Pearl, and her friend, playwright Jeff Schwager. Nancy plugged in via Skype to regale us with the

story of the road trip across America that she and Jeff took in order to meet and interview their favorite authors in their home spaces. The result is a joy for all of us who worship writers and will give you a "must read" list that will take years to work through. 

Imagine sitting at the kitchen counter listening to Ayelet Waldman and her husband Michael Chabon reminisce about their first reading experiences, riffing off each other, filling in each other's blanks. Or think about joining Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Ford in his Maine writing cabin, a haven that looks out over the water, while he explains that he was a kid who was always in trouble - his best buddy ended up in jail. He was in his forties before he discovered he was dyslexic. His teachers just opined that he didn't "apply" himself. Wonder what they think now?

Nancy and Jeff caught up with Louise Erdrich at her bookstore, Birchbark Books, in Minneapolis. https://birchbarkbooks.com/ where she told them, music to our ears, that the library was her destination of choice. The large family was relatively poor so owning books was not an option. Still, she began reading by the age of four and was in the first class at Dartmouth that included women. 

I loved how so many of the authors Nancy and Jeff interviewed talked about what fun it was to see the cards in the back of library books with the names of everyone in town who had checked out and read that book. I remember this vividly myself as one of the quirks of small town life. 

Amor Towles entertained the two in a Victorian townhouse in Gramercy Park, his office graced by three walls of floor to ceiling shelves which includes an impressive number of first editions, we're told. Somehow that's just what I expected from the former lawyer whose debut novel, "The Rules of Civility," knocked out reviewers and then was followed by the incredible "A Gentleman in Moscow."

Book lovers will appreciate the unbridled enthusiasm that Nancy and Jeff exude when they talk about their favorite reading experiences. The depth and breadth of their knowledge is amazing so that they totally hold their own with their renowned subjects, to the point where they all spontaneously quote first lines from novels and long sections of poetry. It's great fun to learn how many of the writers, brought up in wildly differing circumstances, share the same childhood favorites that brought them to literature.

At the end of each interview is a list - oh how we love our lists - of the specific titles mentioned by the authors that had special meaning for them, informed their writing style, or is read year after year as proof of the book's staying power. This collection is a must read for all of you who suffer gladly from book lust!

Monogamy by Sue Miller

Yes! Sue Miller has a new novel after a long drought. I have been on such a winning streak with great reads lately, thank goodness, as they really light up my days, not to mention those hours of sleeplessness during the night. "Monogamy" will be out in two short months so you can place your holds on it now. It is a gorgeous meditation on the stages of love that we traverse throughout long-term relationships. 

Annie is a photographer trying to get her career off the ground when she agrees on a whim to tag along with her off and on again lover to the open house of a hip new bookstore in Harvard Square. A big, blustery man in motion accidentally spills white wine on Annie's blouse and when she retaliates by dumping her glass of red on his shirt, he roars with pleasure and they are off and running. It seems he is

Graham, the owner of the fabulous store with its big armchairs and soft lighting and he is smitten. 

We learn through the reminiscences of Annie, her daughter Sarah, and her stepson Lucas, about the remarkable thirty year marriage, the years of joy, entertaining friends and writers around the massive table where Graham holds forth and Annie creates magical meals. Of course, it all sounds like perfection and naive readers might be envious, but if you know Miller and if you know your literature you will not be lulled into complacency. 

I loved this book for its wisdom. There are so many other relationships in Annie and Graham's lives that Miller explores with honesty and depth. I found the dynamic between Annie and her daughter Sarah to be especially melancholy but realistic in that Sarah considers herself an outsider in her own family, as if the bond between Graham and Annie was too tight for her to penetrate. Sarah seldom felt seen by her mother, at least not in a way that was loving or nurturing, and this led her to such feelings of unworthiness that she moved across the country to escape. 

And Graham, as a means of assuaging his guilt over divorcing his first wife Frieda, encourages, no insists, that Frieda be a constant presence in his life with Annie and Sarah, to the point where Frieda becomes incapable of creating a fulfilling future of her own. And for this Lucas resents his mother, turning to Annie for solace and understanding. 

I fear that the publicity about this novel tells way too much about the story, which I find often happens in reviews as well. All this information may leave you satisfied enough that you won't feel the need to read the book. But you must, because what Miller does so brilliantly through these deeply complex characters is explore the actual meaning of monogamy and the futility of expecting it to be a black or white paradigm. After all, a breach in a relationship may be much more than a sexual betrayal, in fact, I'd venture that an emotional betrayal can be much more damaging and difficult to overcome. 

Sue Miller's work has always been a mainstay of great book discussions and "Monogamy" is no exception. Whether it be virtual or you'll actually be able to host in-house, socially distant book talks be sure to place this one at the top of your list.

The Viaduct by Grace F. Edwards

Before I began reviewing literary fiction for Library Journal my go to reads that would get my mind off my own troubles were police procedurals. I loved them! So how is it that I'd never been introduced to the Harlem thrillers of Grace F. Edwards? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/books/grace-edwards-harlem-mystery-writer-dies-at-87.html

If I hadn't been indulging my penchant for reading the obits of the many unsung women who accrued so many accomplishments without ever making the history books I'd have never discovered Ms. Edwards. But unfortunately, when I searched my library system's catalog I found only two of her many well-received novels, and those were hidden away in the so-called African American collection at one of our more remote branches. 

Long before the re-emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the recent awakening of white consciences to the subtleties of racism, I had a problem with categorizing books this way. It drives me crazy to think of all the people who will never read these great novels because they'll never find them while browsing the shelves. Did some cataloger somewhere think that only African American readers would enjoy a thriller set in 1970's Harlem,  written by a black woman who was a member of the famed Harlem Writer's Guild?

"The Viaduct" is a stand alone novel that exudes period detail. Harlem comes to life in Edwards' capable hands, so much so that you could use the novel as a guidebook to the streets, the juke joints and jazz bars, and the best spots for

good home cooking, much like "The Shadow of the Wind" did for Barcelona. And the authentic dialogue is to die for.

Marin Taylor, a Vietnam veteran whose PTSD is just barely kept in check by his love for his wife Margaret and the momentary birth of their first child, has just been laid off and given his severance pay. Walking home along the viaduct, consumed with how he'll break the news to Margaret, he is accosted by two low-life street criminals. In the tussle Marin is badly injured but not before he manages to push one of his attackers off the bridge to his death, an act of self-defense that sets in motion an evil revenge plot that will take both Margaret and Marin close to the breaking point. 

There are so many great secondary characters in Edwards' book, Marin's Army buddy and silent strength, postal clerk Chance, Jimmy, the bartender at the local club who hears it all and knows when to spill the beans, Benjamin, the black cop who walks a tight rope while trying to determine if his white partner is on the take, and Paulie, the barber who knows just who to call to fence some stolen jewelry. 

Complex and fast-paced, Grace Edwards writes about real people put into dire situations through no fault of their own. Black or white, it really doesn't matter, they are simply working folks who love their families, celebrate milestones, suffer losses, and chat around the dining room table. But Harlem was Edwards' home and becomes a full-fledged member of the cast in all of her novels which include a fabulous series of four mysteries featuring former police officer and social worker, Mali Anderson. 

If you were ever a fan of Ed McBain's outstanding 87th precinct books or Stuart Kaminsky's Inspector Rostnikov series then take a look at Grace Edwards. If your library doesn't carry her either you'll find Kindle editions run about $4.99. You won't be sorry. 

Writers and Lovers by Lily King

Sometime last night I finished Lily King's "Writers and Lovers" and smiled with joy. The finale was exactly what I had hoped for and we know that doesn't happen too often in this surreal covid life. 

When we first meet Casey Peabody she's a mess. She's been working on a novel for six years now, is massively in debt from her education, and has watched all her friends, who used to be as idealistic as she, give up their dreams for

corporate jobs with health insurance and financial security. Sometimes she envies them, more often she scoffs. Casey is mourning the very unexpected death of her mom, waiting tables at Iris in Harvard Square, and living in a one room former potting shed where she walks the landlord's dog for a break in the rent.

And then, a once in a lifetime opportunity comes along, a spot at the prestigious Red Barn Writers' Workshop, where she can finally put her heart and soul into her book. But, in an act of self-sabotage, Casey puts her heart into a new relationship with a poet named Luke, losing her focus even as his output is prodigious. And here, I realize now, is one of the themes of this novel, men and women and the uneven balance of power. 

Having been in the restaurant business for several years and waited many a table, I found King's chapters set at the pretentious Iris particularly apt. King perfectly captures the conversations that go on behind the scenes, the veiled disdain for the servers from the well-heeled customers, and the toxic hierarchy in the kitchen which tends to be male dominated.

King is also sly, sarcastic, and quite funny when describing the outsized ego of the author Oscar Kolton signing his books at a reading attended by Casey and her only other writer friend and confidant Muriel. At this event Casey falls into conversation with aspiring author Silas as they bond over taking snarky, envious jabs at Kolton. And from this arises another theme of this entertaining novel, professional jealousy among writers and lovers. 

There are people in our lives who will always want nothing more than to see us succeed. And if those people happen to share the same profession, in this case writers, their character will be revealed by how they react to their partner's talent or recognition. Watching Casey maneuver the shoals of the publishing world while juggling two new men in her life, her precarious financial situation, a dead end job, and the loss of her mother, is gut wrenching and exhilarating. Though this is a quick, entertaining read, it's full of wisdom about the strength of friends and family to lift us up when we most need it.