Featherless

Plato famously defined a human being as a "featherless biped." It's hard not to sense the ironic humor in this definition, a reminder that, for all our talk about human dignity, our condition is contingent, vulnerable, and at some level even comic.Perhaps that's why the writer A.G. Mojtabai-known for her dry, understated, subtly humorous but ultimately honest and courageous depictions of the human condition-chose the name for her latest novel, set in the confines of Shady Rest Home for the Aged.Mojtabai offers us a varied cast of characters at Shady Rest, including: Eli, who fancies himself a ladies man; Elora, anxious about her wayward nephew; the aloof but lonely scholar Wiktor; and Maddie, a bit eccentric, true, but more wise and compassionate than most. At the center of it all is Daniel, an old soul in a young man's body, with a strange gift for caring for the elderly.Featherless is one of those rare books that brings us news from the final frontier, the end of life. Its unflinching but humane gaze-informed by the author's own experience-serves as a fitting capstone for a literary career of uncommon distinction.