Exquisite. . . a classic tour de force The New York Times It struggled to keep itself aloft, to gain height. But then it suddenly gave up, and dropped as though it were breaking into many piecesEarly on a cold Sunday morning, forty-five-year-old Edgardo Limentani gets up to join a shooting party in the countryside surrounding the town of Ferrara. As the day passes, he contemplates his past, his disappointments and how he has got here. Like the birds he shoots, he realizes, he is trapped, broken, waiting alone for the final coup de grace. Then he sees a way out.The fifth book in Bassanis Novel of Ferrara sequence, and his final novel, The Heron is a taut, poignant portrait of a middle-aged mans reckoning with his life.