The Spectator Bird
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Joe Allston is a retired literary agent who is, in his own words, "killing time before time gets around to killing me." His parents and his only son are long dead, leaving him with neither ancestors nor descendants, tradition nor ties. His job, trafficking the talent of others, had not been his choice. He passes through life as a spectator.
A postcard from a friend causes him to return to the journals of a trip he had taken with his wife twenty years before, a journey to his mother's birthplace, where he'd sought a link with the past. The memories of that trip, both grotesque and poignant, read aloud to his wife so she too can reminisce, move through layers of time and meaning and reveal that Joe Allston isn't quite spectator enough.
This portrait of a husband and wife's marriage and a son's pursuit of his mother's memory is a literary masterpiece.
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Wallace Stegner (1909â1993) wrote many books of fiction and nonfiction, including Crossing to Safety and the National Book Awardâwinning The Spectator Bird. Angle of Repose won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972.
Edward Herrmann, a Tony AwardÂŽ winner and nominee, has starred on both Broadway and the West End, and appeared in well over forty motion pictures; he is perhaps best known for his portrayal of FDR in Eleanor and Franklin, as well as for his role on The Gilmore Girls.
