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The Feast of Love
by Charles Baxter

The Feast of Love Cover

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Powells.com Staff Pick

If you have ever loved, buy this book! How's that for a strong recommendation? Charles Baxter is, in my opinion, one of the most under-appreciated contemporary American authors on the scene. He is remarkably talented. This novel, set in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is comprised of a collection of first person narratives. We hear the voices of Bradley, Chloé, Harry, and Diana, with a few others sprinkled in. You know the saying, "everybody has a story to tell." Baxter tells their stories, stories of love and loss and longing, through exquisite observations that capture profound, visceral human emotion and everyday sentiment. He conveys it in prose that is at once authentic and poetic. Each of the characters approaches life and love differently, and by the end of the book, we care about them all. Baxter gently nudges our guard down and allows us to feel without feeling manipulated. Such is the compassion good writing can render. Recommended by Rebecca

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

From one of our most gifted writers (Chicago Tribune), here is a superb new novel that delicately unearths the myriad manifestations of extraordinary love between ordinary people.

The Feast of Love is just that--a sumptuous work of fiction about the thing that most distracts and delights us. In a re-imagined Midsummer Night's Dream, men and women speak of and desire their ideal mates; parents seek out their lost children; adult children try to come to terms with their own parents and, in some cases, find new ones.

In vignettes both comic and sexy, the owner of a coffee shop recalls the day his first wife seemed to achieve a moment of simple perfection, while she remembers the women's softball game during which she was stricken by the beauty of the shortstop. A young couple spends hours at the coffee shop fueling the idea of their fierce love. A professor of philosophy, stopping by for a cup of coffee, makes a valiant attempt to explain what he knows to be the inexplicable workings of the human heart.

Their voices resonate with each other--disparate people joined by the meanderings of love--and come together in a tapestry that depicts the most irresistible arena of life. Crafted with subtlety, grace, and power, The Feast of Love is a masterful novel.

Review:

“Superb—a near-perfect book, as deep as it is broad in its humaneness, comedy and wisdom.”–The Washington Post Book World


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Review:

"Rich, strange, alive with the miracles of daily life, this novel is a banquet for the soul. So many wonderful characters, all of whom I came to cherish as I watched them intersecting, the initial configurations of love reconfiguring themselves by the end. Truly, this is a novel in which the unexpected is always upon us."
-Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever and The Voyage of the Narwhal

Review:

"The Feast of Love is hilarious and at the same time desperately sad, full of wit and poetry and exquisitely observed perceptions of the human condition, erudite and streetwise at once. It conveys the delicacy, the violence, the salvation, and the destruction of love. What a brilliant, powerful novel!"
-Alan Lightman, author of Einstein's Dreams

Review:

"Never have I read a novel and wanted, immediately, to reread it, as I did with The Feast of Love. Emotionally, intellectually, in all the ways that the very best literature attends us, Baxter's brilliant symphony of love, loss, memory, and astonishing metaphysical boldness is a complete sustenance, a perfect invention. His passionate writing raises the level of regard for life itself, let alone the art of writing. The Feast of Love deserves all lasting attention and great praise."
-Howard Norman, author of The Bird Artist
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About the Author

Charles Baxter lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and teaches at the University of Michigan. He is the author of six previous works of fiction, including Believers, Harmony of the World, and Through the Safety Net (all available in paperback from Vintage Books).
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780375410192
Author:
Baxter, Charles
Publisher:
Pantheon Books
Location:
New York :
Subject:
General
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
Short Stories (single author)
Subject:
Romance
Subject:
Michigan
Subject:
Love stories
Subject:
Community life
Subject:
Ann Arbor (Mich.)
Subject:
Ann Arbor
Copyright:
2000
Edition Number:
1st ed.
Series Volume:
106-308
Publication Date:
c2000
Binding:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Pages:
308 p.
Dimensions:
9.31x6.32x1.14 in. 1.10 lbs.
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