<p class="ql-align-justify">Too often in literature, and American society, the old person is a trope: they are only a grandparent, or only an ailing body, or only an inability to keep up. In <em>The Night Owl Sings</em>,&nbsp;Judy&nbsp;McConnell's protagonists-all of them old-bust the stereotype of old age as a reductive experience.&nbsp;</p><p class="ql-align-justify"><br></p><p class="ql-align-justify">As time tapers, love, relationships, disappointments, change, and everyday life sharpen. As each character lives their final years, a deep, literary complexity emerges, and the sum of a long life is totaled as it nears its conclusion.</p><p><br></p>