The Bird Catcher

Laura Jacobs

Picador

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Margret Snow is the quintessential New York woman.  She dresses the windows of Saks Fifth Avenue by day and mingles in the downtown art world by night.  Married to Charles, a professor at Columbia, they live on the Upper West Side, where, carefully camouflaged within their hectic Manhattan lives, they share a mutual passion for bird watching.  When Margret's life is violently shaked by tragedy, however, she discovers a means to transform her obsession with birds — and her own unlocked imagination — into an ambitious, healing work of art.  The Bird Catcher is a witty, poignant story about a remarkable woman who is as distinctive as the birds that fill the skies above her.

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Book Excerpts

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Chapter One

Margret stood at the stone stairs leading down into the park at 115th Street. The stairs were steep and sinking, pushed in and jutting out. How does such heavy stone get so shifted? Margret always wondered. It couldn't be from people. It must be ice trapped in fissures, freezes impacted like a tooth. Only Nature herself could nudge such slabs, make it look like they had moved in their sleep. Margret lifted her face to the treetops and reclipped her heavy hair back, catching the dark, wavy wisps that were always coming loose and getting in her eyes.

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Reviews

Praise for The Bird Catcher

“Laura Jacobs firmly establishes herself as one of our most astute and elegant observers of a certain rarefied species of female Manhattanite . . . Enchanting.” —Vanity Fair

“Laura Jacobs is an urban miniaturist. In her sleek, pitch-perfect second novel, The Bird Catcher, she lavishes delectable attention on the subtle distinctions wrought by taste, class, money, and style in the city on which she trains her eagle eye….Jacobs orchestrates her character's sonata as expansively and dramatically as a symphony whose strains linger on, long after the last page has been turned.” —Bookforum

“Jacobs presents a measured and compelling yet nonlinear narrative so that readers encounter Margret's life in pieces. And it is well worth the effort to get to know her. Jacobs' incisive writing captures her characters' moods, while her graceful descriptions of the birds that inspire her protagonist illuminate the story.” —Booklist

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About the Author

Laura Jacobs

Laura Jacobs is an award-winning contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the dance critic for The New Criterion. She has also written for Atlantic Monthly, the Village Voice and the New Republic.  She lives in New York City with her husband, writer James Wolcott.

Laura Jacobs

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Available Formats and Book Details

The Bird Catcher
Laura Jacobs

Trade Paperback

Trade Paperback
Picador
June 2010
Trade Paperback
ISBN: 9780312540234
ISBN10: 031254023X
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, 304 pages
$15.00
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Hardcover

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Hardcover
St. Martin's Press
June 2009
Hardcover
ISBN: 9780312540227
ISBN10: 0312540221
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, 304 pages
$24.95

e-Book Agency

Learn more about this edition
e-Book Agency
St. Martin's Press
June 2009
e-Book Agency
ISBN: 9781429987752
ISBN10: 1429987758
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, 304 pages
$6.99
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