AUDIOBOOK
About
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. But a postcard from a friend causes him to return to the journals of a trip he had taken years before. The memories of that trip to his mother's birthplace move through layers of time and meaning, and reveal that Joe Allston isn't quite spectator enough.
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Reviews
"Edward Herrmann is perhaps best known to younger audiences as kindly, patrician Richard Gilmore on the television series Gilmore Girls. Here, Herrmann uses his same elegant persona to amplify and underscore the bittersweet nuance of Stegner's novel…There are hidden reserves of frustration and displeasure in Stegner's tale, and Herrmann aptly conveys these emotions with short, sharp bursts of dial
Publishers Weekly (starred audio review)
"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. Herrmanns vocal characterizations are subtle but distinct-from the 'Bryn Mawr' accent of the narrators wife to the accents of the Danish women (including Karen Blixen, better known as I
AudioFile
"The Spectator Bird won the National Book Award when it was first published in 1976, and the story is no less intriguing now; Joe's gripes with the modern world still resonate. Reader Edward Herrmann sounds just like the doleful old man whose story he narrates. His famous voice…brings a grace to this telling of a classic story…The Spectator Bird, and Mr. Herrmann's reading, is recommended to anyon
SoundCommentary.com (starred review)