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Loading... The Feast of Love (2000)by Charles Baxter
This is a really lovely, surprisingly unsentimental and original love story. I recommend it for a quick, easy read that will make you feel okay with the universe. (  ) KristySP | Apr 21, 2013 |  Charles Baxter is a gifted writer. Traveling a well worn path of New Yorker short stories and John Updike marriage sagas, the book goes down easily, yet it digs deeply into its characters and provides some very touching moments. There were a few changes I was itching to make to the curve of the story - I didn't see how all of the classical and Kirkegaardian references quite added up, and a great mystery remains (not a major spoiler to say so) about how the main character, schmuck that he appears to be, evidently created at least one great masterpiece. ( ) idyll | Apr 9, 2013 | I dissent. I must not be among the literary cognoscenti mentioned in the blurb about this book. I found it impossible to distinguish one character's voice from the next, even taking the annoying verbal tics into consideration. I found the narrative shallow and the writing merely workmanlike. In fact, it left me so unmoved that I abandoned it on the train with my bookmark on page 160. (  ) satyridae | Apr 5, 2013 | Really good, really quick. ( ) cat-ballou | Apr 2, 2013 | This is a sexy, savvy, yet subtle, suburban stories interweaving characters and their story into a novel filled with strong doses of reality. If your looking for escapism, look elsewhere; however, if you're looking for realistic characters with bite then proceed knowing the wrapping doesn't end in warm fuzzies. I gave it a 3/5 because some of the characters stories I didn't connect well with, but overall it is well crafted. (  ) revslick | Jul 31, 2012 | no reviews | add a review
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You should call it The Feast of Love. I'm the expert on that. I should write that book. Actually, I should be in that book. You should put me into your novel. I'm an expert on love. I've just broken up with my second wife, after all. I'm in an emotional tangle. Maybe I'd shoot myself before the final chapter. Your readers would wonder about the outcome.But why stop there? Bradley goes on to suggest that he send people to Baxter, "actual people, for a change, like for instance human beings who genuinely exist, and you listen to them for a while. Everybody's got a story, and we'll just start telling you the stories we have"--a sly tip-off to the reader of this elegant, quirky, and wholly engrossing novel that the writer may be no more reliable than his narrators.
What follows is a chronicle of love--the mad kind, the bad kind, and the kind that sustains us when everything else is gone. In addition to Smith, we meet Chloé, a young waitress at Bradley's espresso bar, and her ex-junkie boyfriend, Oscar; Bradley's next door neighbors, Harry Ginsburg, an elderly professor of philosophy, and his wife, Esther; and Kathryn and Diana, Bradley's two ex-wives. The characters take turns narrating, often commenting on and correcting versions of events mentioned by other characters in previous chapters, and occasionally advising Baxter on the progress of his novel: "Don't threaten people, especially lawyers" legal eagle Diana warns "Charlie" shortly before she launches into her own story. "Don't threaten your own characters. It's for your own good. You'll wind up in a mess of litigation and... subplots." But in The Feast of Love, God is in the subplots--Oscar and Chloé's involvement in the porn industry; Esther and Harry's agonized relationship with their mentally ill son; Bradley's travails in love, art, and dog ownership. As the novel progresses, these separate strands gradually merge, and not even an unexpected tragedy can dim the luster of this moonstruck romance. For by the time Baxter brings his tale of love and loss and redemption to a close, his characters have all found their way to the feast--bittersweet though some of the dishes may be. --Alix Wilber
(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Apr 2011 12:38:43 -0400)
In vignettes both comic and sexy, men and women speak of and desire the ideal mates who may be hiding in the unmapped sphere of possibilities in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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