The Spectator Bird

Name: The Spectator Bird
Author: Wallace Stegner
ISBN: 9780141392332

Wallace Stegner

award won

score

The Spectator Bird

Wallace Stegner

award won

score

#749 of 8,085 books · #444 in Fiction

Won the National Book Award for Fiction (1977).

Literary agent Joe Allston, the central character of Stegner's novel All the Little Live Things, is now retired and, in his own words, 'just killing time until 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 an old friend causes Allston to return to the journals of a trip he and his wife 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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