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A review by bjr2022
The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner
4.0
This is my third Stegner book, and I now love the man. I first met his protagonist Joe Allston in All the Little Live Things, the follow-up to this book, which ended in an earthquake. The Spectator Bird is much quieter but just as good a literary meal.
I finished this book just after attending my 50th high school reunion, and I could not have been better prepared to understand what Stegner grappled with and came to peace about in this National Book Award-winning novel. I came away from my reunion with a sweet sad happy sense that my life and even things that didn’t feel like choices at the time, but rather rejections, failures, and a hopeless inability to meet my own goals, were actually perfect choices—all leading to a life that I would not trade for any other. This is essentially what Stegner is writing about with such profound understanding in The Spectator Bird. I’m satisfied.
I finished this book just after attending my 50th high school reunion, and I could not have been better prepared to understand what Stegner grappled with and came to peace about in this National Book Award-winning novel. I came away from my reunion with a sweet sad happy sense that my life and even things that didn’t feel like choices at the time, but rather rejections, failures, and a hopeless inability to meet my own goals, were actually perfect choices—all leading to a life that I would not trade for any other. This is essentially what Stegner is writing about with such profound understanding in The Spectator Bird. I’m satisfied.