His relationship with Cass, which, understandably, begins to wane as a result of his lack of empathy with her regarding her living arrangements, suggests that he accepts her frustration as just another part of his life.
Micah lived in the Govans section of Baltimore and tended an apartment building there.Īuthor Anne Tyler, well known for her ability to create sympathetic characters, manages to bring even the sometimes frustratingly dull Micah Mortimer to life, despite his lack of ambition, lack of imagination, and complete disinterest in change. Instead of making the obvious offer to her, he assures her that she will surely find another place. A phone call from his woman friend of the past three years, Cassia Slade, suggests some new possibilities for Micah, when she tells him that she might be evicted from her apartment and will have no place to live, but her implied suggestion goes over his head.
When he returns to his apartment, he showers, cleans up the already tidy apartment, takes out trash, if it is trash day, and checks his phone to see if he has any new clients for his modest computer tech business, “Tech Hermit.” If he has to drive to a client’s house, he obeys every traffic rule, convinced that the Traffic God approves and will credit his good behavior. “He lives alone he keeps to himself his routine is etched in stone.” He does his regular morning run in his Govans neighborhood of Baltimore wearing ordinary sneakers, knee-length denim cutoffs, and tee-shirt – nothing fancy. Micah Mortimer, the main character of Anne Tyler’s latest novel, her twenty-third, could not be more ordinary, at least on the surface, yet Anne Tyler makes his story one that will keep even jaded readers intrigued and involved in his unexciting life.Īlready forty-three, he has had his share of girlfriends, and now, “women friends,” since he refuses to refer to women over thirty as “girls.” None of his relationships have evolved into anything permanent, however, nor has he expected them to. There was something about the rounded top of it….What was that little redhead doing by the side of the road?” “On the homeward stretch this morning, he made his usual mistake of imagining for a second that a certain fire hydrant, faded to the pinkish color of an aged clay flowerpot, was a child or a very short grown-up.
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