This is a unique story about a retired teacher surviving a hard winter on memory and jokes finds that life still has surprises in store for him.
Warren Thouless, a recently retired teacher, and long-retired actor, as well as aspiring thinker, lives stuffed up in a small basement room that fell into disorder. At least that's how the narrator of this book sees himself.
His wife has left him, gone off to someplace in India on a spiritual quest. Now and then she sends a postcard to say how she is. Impelled by some mixture of desolation and high spirits, Warren has let Tessa Niles, a talented and beautiful former student to talk him into buying a deconsecrated church to turn it into a theatre and he struggles to survive a winter of solitude in the empty building, delivering a coming monologue to an audience of one.
Gradually, his life takes a new course. With Tessa's assistance, he begins to revive his career as an actor. His life becomes its own kind of spiritual quest. Shakespeare and Chekhov and Thornton Wilder provide words for him to speak. The gods hover. He ends his story on the brink of astonishing possibilities.
This is a unique book that is compelling in its own way. It's a story of redemption and triumph of sorts, and a story that will keep the reader reading until the last page.
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