Featherless — A.G. Mojtabai

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.