Rating: 
Summary: terrific writing and a great character
Review: although this book starts out a little slow, stegner's joe allston becomes more than a moaning & groaning old man, but a adroit recorder of history doled out through his witty and sarcastic mind. the weaving of allston's current battle with aging with the story from his past is great. stegner's prose is enchanting. i was disappointed the book ended.
Rating: 
Summary: Profound and Moving
Review: I had to read another book by Wallace Stegner after reading Angle of Repose. I didn't think this would have a chance of measuring up to Angle of Repose, and it didn't. That's not a put-down though because that just means it is around number two on my all-time favorite list. One reason I thought I would have trouble with The Spectator Bird is that it is about aging and about a long marital relationship, and I'm eighteen. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to relate to its themes. I was very wrong. Even though I haven't lived seventy years and do not know many of the feelings Joe Alston had, I was able to learn from the novel. The Spectator Bird gave me many insights into the live of my grandparents and even my parents. I have seen my family members grapple with the questions about their own lives that Joe fought with in The Spectator Bird. I have also witnessed relationships like that between Joe and Ruth. The book has helped me to see some of what their existance is like and also what mine will look like in the future. The Spectator Bird is just an amazing book. Nobody writes as well as Stegner. I don't know how many lines of his prose I have written down so that I can remember them. The characters are also so multi-dimensional. It seems like you know them (and the author) so well. The Spectator Bird is just a beautiful and satisfying read which I plan to revisit in the future and which I plan to recommend to any intelligent readers. Stegner needs to be read more often.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful discovery
Review: I'm new to this author, but immediately went out and bought another of his. Captures relationships like a reflection in a drop of water.
Rating: 
Summary: Skip this unless...
Review: If you like Gothic tales, novels like Embers, then this is for you! So much heavy breathing, foreshadowing, dark hints, pregnant pauses (literally), and unlikely plot twists played out against moonlit nights and witches
dancing in the woods, while a thoroughly "modern" aging narrator looks back to tell this tale--returning to his diary of a passionate encounter one night 20 years ago in his middle years when he glimpsed the possibility of life (and love) beyond the ordinary...and of course let it go. Quite wisely! Not since "Rebecca" has a work of popular fiction so irritated me, but if Sir Olivier comes back from the dead to play the hero, I'm game.
Rating:
Summary: Another Stegner Masterpiece
Review: The plot of this novel is deceptively straightforward: a postcard from a long-lost friend reminds retired, and tired, Joe Allston of the Danish trip he took with his wife twenty years earlier. He goes to his study and retrieves the diary that he wrote at the time. His wife, Ruth, asks him to read it aloud, so that she can relive these memories as well. And as we share in their moments together, both currently and on this memorable Danish trip, we realize that there had been some unspoken questions between the two of them dating from this journey. Bringing it into the open resolves their uncertainties with one another, and causes Joe to recall the emotional turmoil he went through which has never entirely gone away. This is a book about love, about duty, about the sweet fulfillment of an enduring marriage, and about the sad futility of age. It is about kindness and despair; about joy and the bittersweet sadness of unrequitted love. It is filled with intelligence and wit and written by a man who was an absolute master of his craft. It is pointless for me to go on. There is no superlative I can use which will ever do justice to this lovely, poignant novel. Despite the fact that we know what the inescapable conclusion is going to be, the last five or six pages are nevertheless like a series of hammer-blows to the heart, and I don't recall another novel bringing tears to my eyes as this one did at its end. It is only January the 6th, and I know I will not read a better novel this year, or perhaps for many years to come.
Rating:
Summary: Another Stegner Masterpiece
Review: The plot of this novel is deceptively straightforward: a postcard from a long-lost friend reminds retired, and tired, Joe Allston of the Danish trip he took with his wife twenty years earlier. He goes to his study and retrieves the diary that he wrote at the time. His wife, Ruth, asks him to read it aloud, so that she can relive these memories as well. And as we share in their moments together, both currently and on this memorable Danish trip, we realize that there had been some unspoken questions between the two of them dating from this journey. Bringing it into the open resolves their uncertainties with one another, and causes Joe to recall the emotional turmoil he went through which has never entirely gone away. This is a book about love, about duty, about the sweet fulfillment of an enduring marriage, and about the sad futility of age. It is about kindness and despair; about joy and the bittersweet sadness of unrequitted love. It is filled with intelligence and wit and written by a man who was an absolute master of his craft. It is pointless for me to go on. There is no superlative I can use which will ever do justice to this lovely, poignant novel. Despite the fact that we know what the inescapable conclusion is going to be, the last five or six pages are nevertheless like a series of hammer-blows to the heart, and I don't recall another novel bringing tears to my eyes as this one did at its end. It is only January the 6th, and I know I will not read a better novel this year, or perhaps for many years to come.
Rating:
Summary: Truly Captivating
Review: This is a masterpiece of a novel, captivating the reader to finish it in one sitting. The narrator of the novel is one Joseph Allston who is retired, living in the countryside near San Farancisco with his wife Ruth. Both are above seventy. Joe is suffering from deteriorating health, arthritis is the major ailment for him. He is found to be like a "Spectator bird whose feathers are beaten off". In his own words, "I am a God-damned museum exhibit of deterioration". The novel opens with the chapter in which he receives a post card from a friend of twenty five years back. This moves him to seek out his daily journal which he had kept during the days he spent in Denmark. His wife wants him to read it to her. As the story proceeds he continuously reads from the journal. From these readings we get glimpses into the good days he spent in Denmark and to his own personal background. The sympathy and interest he had for a woman named Astrid whom he calls 'the countess' is also made known. He ends the journal with the countess' narrration of her past and her bitter life, at which moment he begins to feel interested in her in a special manner. Ruth, his wife comes to know about his relationship and realizes that he quit journaling at that point for the same reason. The narrative brings out the yearnings and anguishes of growing old, which is heavy on Joe. Sometimes he is even suicidal in his comments to Ruth. But Ruth tries to cheer him out of his morbidity and negative way of looking at life.
Rating:
Summary: A subtle, thoughtful and accomplished work of literature
Review: This is a very rewarding piece of fiction written by the late Wallace Stegner. His writing is accessible, but nuanced and deep.
In this work, the National Book Award winner for 1977, Stegner profiles a few days in the lives of Joe Allston and his wife Ruth, who are in their twilight years, almost 70, and retired in relative comfort near San Francisco. A respected literary agent, Allston feels the pang or sense of not having accomplished much of direct or lasting value or personal satisfaction in his own life, paralleling his own experiences with that of the bird that watches and observes the living of other, more active and involved birds. He sees himself as being on the perimeter of the lives of those writers that he represents and also reads; but whom he both loves and hates.
Having regard to the title and parallels, this is not really a book about birds, for if it was, I doubt I could have stayed the course. It is a story of a man both in part frustrated and satisfied, although not at a point of admitting either emotion fully, who explores a period in his life some twenty years before, which had a profound and lasting impact on his life since. His son having died many years before, he has lived out his life with Ruth, and there are silences, a few secrets, many knowing looks, questions, but also many shared emotions that give their marriage and this story much resonance. A large part of the book follows his journal writing 20 years earlier while on a sabbatical with his wife in Denmark, the land of his mother's birth, and from where she fled at a young age. There are some secrets buried in that place that form the backdrop for this story. This is a story of reflecting and learning, rather than neat thirty minute lessons lived out with happy conclusions. Much that might help Joe is not apparent to him at the time he is experiencing it.
The story captures the irritations of family and over-familiarity with those we love but who can also drive us crazy. And coupled with that, the lure of the unfamiliar and exotic. As his life and the story evolves, Joe rediscovers the deep love he has for his wife and partner, Ruth.
Joe's questions and torment are perhaps reflected well in the following passage:
"What was it? Did I feel cheated? Did I look back and feel that I had given up my chance for what they call fulfillment? Did I count the mountain peaks of my life and find every one a knoll? Was I that fellow whose mother loved him, but she died; whose son had been a tragedy to both his parents and himself; whose wife up to the age of twenty had been a nice girl and since the age of twenty a nice woman? Whose profession was something he did not choose, but fell into, and which he practiced with intelligence but without joy? Had I gone through my adult life glancing desperately sidelong in hope of diversion, rescue, transfiguration."
Joe does not get all the answers to these questions in a neat little bundle, so neither do we. But he acknowledges finally that he has been on part of the journey of life as more than just a spectator.
Rating: 
Summary: wonderful beginning
Review: This was my first exposure to Stegner.
At first I was engrossed, Wonderful descriptive writing, pithy quotations from the narrator and his interior monologues engaging and his attendant pre-occupations startlingly apropos-I am in my early seventies. And there was a stately measured quality of pace like 40's and 50's novels, those story crafted books (Novels when story was engine) that was peaceful and nostalgic, a slower time before the quicker cuts and the flood of the compressed narrative of blogs, www et al. When one curled up with a good read.
And there is a wonderful creation of Isak Dinesen But just after that, half way through the book I began to lose interest. I found that the story became gothic: implausible, an archaic melodrama with far too much foreshadowing. The characterization of the central protagonists-Astrid and her brother stagy, the dialogue wordy and contrived. And poor Ruth, the narrators wife, so thinly developed; "a nice girl and ... a nice woman" So I read rapidly through to the end, a sweet conclusion, but plausible only if we believe-is Stegner that tough a novelist- that to the very end our narrator chooses to deny the authenticity of his experiences, to continue, even now to "scratch dead leaves over them." in which case the ending is sad indeed.
Rating:
Summary: Very highly recommended
Review: When people ask who my favorite author is, Wallace Stegner is invariably one of the four or five names I toss out. And often I get the same response... "I've never read any Stegner" or even "I don't know the name". Stegner seems to be one of American literatures best kept secrets. This book won the National Book Award in 1977. It's about Joe Allston, a retired literary agent, who lives with his wife in California. He is 69 years old and looking back at his life with a sense of discontent. He and his wife relive a trip they took to Denmark 20 years before, by reading a journal that Joe kept while they were there. The plot line switches back and forth from the present to the past. This book is about the choices we make in our lives and how they affect everything that comes after. It's about aging and death, and foremost about life. Stegner writes about real life in such intimate terms that it makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck (at least it does that to me). Needless to say, a very highly recommended read.
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