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 The Night Owl Sings, Judy McConnell's protagonists-all of them old-bust the stereotype of old age as a reductive experience.

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.