Anne Tyler’s Redhead by the Side of the Road

I think I’ve mentioned before that I’ve always been a huge Anne Tyler fan. I was introduced to her work in college during a contemporary fiction class I took for my major, and I got hooked on her books with the first novel. As I recall, that was titled, Searching for Caleb. Since then, I’ve read every book she’s written and I’ve never once been disappointed.

Her most recent novel, Redhead by the Side of the Road, did not disappoint me either. Once again, Tyler took simple people and made them extraordinary. She does that with all her characters, and her story lines. In Redhead by the Side of the Road, she took one of the most boring people on the planet and turned him into someone fascinating. And she did that with one of the best examples of word economy I’ve seen so far. This is not a long novel, but it is a perfect novel length. It’s tight and solid, and the way a novel should be written. Anyone who says otherwise knows very little about creative writing and fiction. As far as style and technique goes, this could be Tyler’s greatest work so far.

I’m not going into great detail about the story line because I don’t like worrying about spoilers. However, this time Tyler let everyone know she has a sense of humor with the ending. It’s a typical ending for an Anne Tyler book, but it’s the first time I have ever seen this type of ending actually spelled out in one single word. Anne Tyler is a clever woman, and this one word…and it is just one word…at the very end of the novel made me smile.

With all this said, I could recommend this book or any other book by Anne Tyler to anyone. Here’s the Amazon link. 

Mayor Pete Talks About Queer People Who Voted Against Him

I rarely ever get into politics here, however, when an openly gay man who is married runs for President of the United States and he makes it to the mainstream, you can be damn sure I’m going to follow him and I’m going to support him. I’m an openly gay man and I’ve seen and experienced more discrimination in my lifetime than I even care to remember, and I am going to support the gay candidate. I know one thing for certain. The openly gay candidate is going to have my back when no one else will have it.

With that said, as amazing as it might sound, there were actually people who fall under the LGBTQ umbrella who did not support Pete Buttigieg. But more than that, these people were the first to criticize Buttigieg. And Buttigieg recently addressed this, nicely.

“I think our LGBT+ community is going through that generational experience,” Buttigieg waxed. “I wonder if for some people it was empowering, in terms of a group that’s so close to the edge in terms of marginalization, to frankly feel empowered to be queer and to not vote for [an out-queer candidate].”

He goes into more detail, and you can read that here.  

I actually feel very sorry for any LGBTQ people who support non-LGBTQ candidates and don’t realize they will eventually get slapped in the face. And it will happen to them because no hetero candidate will ever fully understand what it’s like to be LGBTQ. I have never seen that fail. 

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