A self-employed tech expert, superintendent of his Baltimore apartment building, cautious to a fault behind the steering wheel, Micah Mortimer seems content leading a steady, circumscribed life. But one day his routines are blown apart when his significant other tells him she's facing eviction, and a teenager shows up at Micah's door claiming to be his son.
Tyler knows what she’s doing ... This Baltimore is singularly Anne Tyler’s spool, ladder and planet. And Anne Tyler knows that memory is a powerhouse, a compass and also a liar ... 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.
But reading this enjoyable novel—her 23rd—it struck me that there can’t be a writer, of either gender, who creates more engaging or multi-dimensional men ... 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. Slippery, too ... Tyler’s ability to make you care about her characters is amazing, and never more so than here.
Tyler wastes neither sentence nor scene ... It’s no surprise that every quirky character, from the stars to the cameos, is a vintage Tyler portrait, fully drawn ... an ending both nuanced and satisfying. A master at the small domestic moments that stand in for large and universal truths, Tyler never disappoints. This is a wonderful novel.
