Birder - Julie Marie Myatt

   “…Myatt excels at using small details to evoke larger truths.…
   BIRDER explore[s] fatherhood, mortality, the post-recession economy and the illusory nature of the American dream…
   BIRDER revels in quirky, meta-theatrical artifice, complete with flashbacks, overt symbolism and fourth-wall puncturing monologues. Its protagonist, the accountant Roger, is a poor excuse for a dad…. Roger has always played by the rules in pursuit of an affluent lifestyle. Like so many in the disappearing middle class, Roger grapples with the pressures of living beyond his means; his atypical answer to midlife crisis, however, is to quit his job and take up bird watching….
   Roger maintains a disarming boyish charisma as he chronicles how the growing appreciation of birds hiding in plain sight among us come to represent everything else that’s missing from his life.
   …[BIRDER] offers a quiet vision of hard-won hope amid adversity…”
Philip Brandes, Los Angeles Times