Wallace Earle Stegner The Spectator Bird ISBN 13: 9781441724946

The Spectator Bird

9781441724946: The Spectator Bird
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[MP3CD audiobook format in Vinyl case.]

Winner of the National Book Award [Read by Edward Herrmann]

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 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, move through layers of time and meaning and reveal that Joe Allston isn't quite spectator enough.

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About the Author:
WALLACE STEGNER (1903-1993) was the author of many books of fiction and nonfiction, including the National Book Award-winning The Spectator Bird (1976) and Crossing to Safety. Angle of Repose won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972.
From AudioFile:
Wallace Stegner isn't much read any more, and that's a great shame. Books like THE SPECTATOR BIRD, especially in this fine reading by Edward Herrmann, offer the reward of ideas that will resonate for a long time and characters whose sometimes-epic sorrows resolve on a human scale. Herrmann's vocal characterizations are subtle but distinct--from the "Bryn Mawr" accent of the narrator's wife to the accents of the Danish women (including Karen Blixen, better known as Isak Dinesen) whom the narrator meets on a recuperative vacation. As Joseph Alston, a dutiful man whose passions are not easily engaged, Herrmann moves from resignation to frustration to love and self-knowledge. Herrmann gives a mature and complex performance of a mature and complex novel. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

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Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

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