The Pigeon

Jonathan Noel-already past fifty, with the last payment for his tiny attic room only months away, and his life's plan laid out ahead of him-opens his door one morning to find a pigeon in the landing. This atom-splitting disruption in the orderly existence of a most anxious creature of habit precipitates a series of crises that are as moving and dismaying as they are funny. Teetering precariously on the edge of madness, Jonathan careens headlong on a journey of the self that leads him-and us-from terrror to redemption, from darkness to light, to an emotional resolution that offers further proof of a virtuoso writer's extraordinary art.