The Feast of Love

published	May 1st 2001 by Vintage
first published	2000
binding	Paperback
isbn	037570910X (isbn13: 9780375709104)
ebook
pages	308
description	Among literary cognoscenti, Charles Baxter has a well-deserved reputation as one of America's finest writers. Best known for his short stories, Baxte...more [close] Among literary cognoscenti, Charles Baxter has a well-deserved reputation as one of America's finest writers. Best known for his short stories, Baxter has also produced three novels. His fourth, The Feast of Love, combines the best of both genres--with a light dusting of metafiction to sweeten the dish. The book begins with Baxter himself waking from a nightmare and going for a moonlit walk through his hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan. While sitting on a park bench, he is joined by an acquaintance of 12 years--and, incidentally, one of the main characters in the novel. It is Bradley who gives Baxter the name for the novel he's currently struggling to write, and even offers himself as a character: <blockquote> 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. </blockquote> 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 [close]
date added	02-17-07 edit book

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Kristen rated it:

02/10/08

bookshelves: goodfiction

Read in February, 2008

A couple weeks ago I picked up Charles Baxter's book A Relative Stranger: Stories. A beautiful book of short stories that I found recommended on a list of the "best novels you've never read." The stories were so well-written and charming that I read many of them multiple times. An added bonus was that most were set in Michigan (Baxter used to teach at the University of Michigan). I'd heard of Baxter before but had never read him. I have no idea why. I immediately headed to the li...more A couple weeks ago I picked up Charles Baxter's book A Relative Stranger: Stories. A beautiful book of short stories that I found recommended on a list of the "best novels you've never read." The stories were so well-written and charming that I read many of them multiple times. An added bonus was that most were set in Michigan (Baxter used to teach at the University of Michigan). I'd heard of Baxter before but had never read him. I have no idea why. I immediately headed to the library and literally picked every book he's written from the shelf. This week I finished Feast of Love. AH-MAZING.

Baxter, in a self-proclaimed insomniac state, weaves the story of several people to give one coherent story of mistaken and real love. At times the story is so sad, I felt suffocated. But other moments were touching and uplifting. At all times, the writing was envy inducing. I feel like I marked every single page as notable.

Here is a small taste....

The man--ME, this pale being, no one else, it seems--wakes in fright, tangled up in the sheets. The darkened room, the half-closed doors of the closet and the slender pine-slatted lamp on the bedside table: I don't recognize them. On the opposite side of the room, the streetlight's distant luminance coating the window shade has an eerie unwelcome glow. None of these previously familiar objects have any familiarity now. What's worse, I cannot remember or recognize myself. I sit up in bed--actually, I lurch in mild sleepy terror toward the vertical. There's a demon here, one of the unnamed ones, the demon of erasure and forgetting. I can't manage my way through this feeling because my mind isn't working, and because it, the flesh in which I'm housed, hasn't yet become me.

As a member of the bourgeoisie, I live quietly in this midwestern city of ghosts and mutterers. Everywhere you go in this town you hear people muttering. Often this is brilliant muttering, tenurable muttering, but that is not my point. All these mini-vocalizations are the effect of the local university, the Amalagamated Education Corporations, as I call it, my employer. It is in the nature of universities to promote ideas that should not be put to use, whose glories must reside exclusively in the cranium. Therefore the muttering.

They--we--had a certain party varnish on. Depending on whether I've had enough to drink, I usually don't like ironic friendliness as much as homely glitter. Because it's the Midwest, no one really glitters because no one has to, it's more a dull shine, like frequently used silverware. We were all presentable enough, but almost no one was making any kid of statement. Out here in Michigan, real style is too difficult to maintain; the styles are all convenient and secondhand. We're all hand-me-downs personalities. But that's liberating: it frees you up for other matters of greater importance, the great themes, the sordid passions.

There are so many more great passages but they only really make sense when you've gotten to know and love the characters. I strongly, strongly recommend this book. Seriously! I rarely use all 5 stars!...less

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Richard rated it:

07/11/08

Read in September, 2007

Charles Baxter may have started out as a short story writer, but his latest efforts of note have been his novels. _The Feast of Love_ was a finalist for the National Book Award, and I can see why (though I have still to compare it to that year's winner). The idea is somewhat Kundera-esque--the novel begins with writer 'Charlie Baxter' waking in the middle of the night from a dream of asynchronous gears and finds that he is suffering from temporary amnesia. Once recovered, he decides to take a wa...more Charles Baxter may have started out as a short story writer, but his latest efforts of note have been his novels. _The Feast of Love_ was a finalist for the National Book Award, and I can see why (though I have still to compare it to that year's winner). The idea is somewhat Kundera-esque--the novel begins with writer 'Charlie Baxter' waking in the middle of the night from a dream of asynchronous gears and finds that he is suffering from temporary amnesia. Once recovered, he decides to take a walk to calm his nerves, and while doing so runs into a neighbor, Bradley, who has a dog of the same name. As they talk, the subject of love comes up, and 'Charlie Baxter' decides to make Bradley the first subject in his new project--a novel about love.

From there, the narrative is taken over by the characters the writer talks to for their stories and reflections on love. Aside from Bradley, we meet his two ex-wives, and a young couple, Oscar and Chloe, who work at Bradley's coffee shop. There is also Harry Ginsberg and his wife, Esther, who live next door to Bradley. Quite quickly, three generations are established to offer different perspectives of love. The interest Baxter sustains here is that the stories are all quite difficult--Bradley has definitely run a string of bad luck when it comes to choosing wives. One is very confused about her sexuality, another is not sure if she wants to relinquish the lover she has when she meets Bradley. Oscar and Chloe fall under the temptations of quick money to allow them to get away together from their bad home situations, and with the allure of quick money comes contact with less than scrupulous people. Even Harry and Esther have a troublesome son, Aaron, who likes to call in the middle of the night to extort money out of his folks.

Baxter's fiction is sometimes a little too distancing, when his characters too freely discuss philosophy or obscure ancient music, playing up the element of quirkiness, but making the characters themselves more representative than sympathetic. _The Feast of Love_ does have moments of quirky conversation, but Baxter sustains it all quite well in this book. Most all of the characters feel very substantial, possibly because Baxter has found a format that permits introspection and philosophy very naturally.

I was quite impressed with this novel and read it quite thoroughly. I found all of the characters engaging and the hints of danger palpable and possible. Baxter is out to paint the Midwest as a solace for the introspective and quietly conflicted. Possibly this is the Midwest Baxter has known all of his life, or perhaps it is a fictive world that he hopes will find a niche in American literature. Either way, this novel has definitely broken solid ground in literary tradition.
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Matthew rated it:

03/21/08

Read in March, 2008

I almost "really liked" this book, but something kept me from getting up and over that slope. It's a really large-hearted novel - and very, very well-written - but its scope was a little small for my tastes.

In terms of the characters (which, in the end, is all this novel is), I loved reading the Ginsburgs and their careworn intelligence and parental heartbreak, and I enjoyed Diana's immediately recognizable, warfaring vanity; but I couldn't stand reading Chloe and Oscar and thei...more I almost "really liked" this book, but something kept me from getting up and over that slope. It's a really large-hearted novel - and very, very well-written - but its scope was a little small for my tastes.

In terms of the characters (which, in the end, is all this novel is), I loved reading the Ginsburgs and their careworn intelligence and parental heartbreak, and I enjoyed Diana's immediately recognizable, warfaring vanity; but I couldn't stand reading Chloe and Oscar and their impoverished, unwashed amour fou. Baxter doesn't let this issue slide entirely, to his credit, but in which atlas are these proletariat sensualists within a day's drive of the bourgeois professionals that inhabit the rest of the novel? I grew up in the Midwest: you may be surprised to learn that, as elsewhere, class divisions exist there. I also couldn't really place Bradley, who was supposedly at the center of this story. It seemed to me that he was a different character entirely to every other character (the narrator included). Maybe that's the point but, well, if that's the point... make that the point.

I did like the the construction of the narrative, and I found that there were some wonderful writerly gems ("America, of course, is a country vast enough to lose a child in" really stuck out for me; as did the image of the Dragon with the Rubber Nose; I also really liked "Ginsburg's" understanding of child sacrifice vis-a-vis the Kierkegaardian Abraham, but that may just be because that's all I recall of the time I spent with Fear and Trembling).

I guess I struggle, systematically, with renderings of human experience so focused on love, or sex, as the prime mover of identity. I suppose you might ask a waiting room of thoughtful people which description of human life's value they'd pin their name to, if pressed; I suppose a percentage of them might say love, some, even, without having to think about it first. This book is written for them. It's well-written and has moments of brilliant perceptiveness - I almost "really liked" it - but, for my tastes, its scope is a little small (as I mentioned)....less

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Empress rated it:

10/22/07

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: insomniacs, love-fools & Shakey Jake allumni.

A seemingly disoriented post-midnight walk through several lives and loves. People clumsily come together, and come apart, shifting narrators and tones--all thick with the theme of love (and loss) in its' many, many forms.

I loved this books and had a hard time putting it down, literally. (Which rarely happens to me.) At times, however, I was worried it was too cute a novel, given the occasional all-too-precious line, but before my skepticism could fully take hold, Baxter quickly won me back...more A seemingly disoriented post-midnight walk through several lives and loves. People clumsily come together, and come apart, shifting narrators and tones--all thick with the theme of love (and loss) in its' many, many forms.

I loved this books and had a hard time putting it down, literally. (Which rarely happens to me.) At times, however, I was worried it was too cute a novel, given the occasional all-too-precious line, but before my skepticism could fully take hold, Baxter quickly won me back with a succinct, beautifully eloquent line: More than enough to effectivly counteract his unfourtunate lapsess of syrupyness. As such, I found myself underlining often, and it is safe to say I am a big fan of his writing.

I would have given it five stars, were it not for the too-cutesy bits and the fact that, towards the end, the novel shifts heavily onto Chole's character--far from my favorite.

Having previosly been a teenage girl myself, I am not sure if I found her character unbelievable, or simply annoying. Of course, I empathized with, and could relate to some defining aspects of her story, but overall, I found her language tiresome and her development somewhat shallow.
Besides Chole and her lover; Oscar, I was totally engrossed in all the characters and their stories.

Particularly, the less prominent: Harry, an aging Jewish man, who constantly ruminates on Kierkegaardian theory, and the dissapearence of his adult son.

All in all, a great book about the trouble, complexity and wonder of love.

***Oh, and appraently this has just been made into a movie. The movie takes place in Oregon, and well, last time I checked, Ann Arbor ain't in Oregon. Their failure to get this primary detail correct, gives me little faith that the film will do ANY sort of justice to the book. (Though I do so love Morgan Freeman! XOXO!!!)

And shit--look at what the silver screen did to Girl, Interrupted!--I am still grumbling about that one.

So please read before you watch, and don't judge a book by it's movie!!!...less

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Jamie rated it:

01/07/08

The reason I loved this novel so much was because of its portrayal of love. The novel, the story, its images all were imperfect and all had something not quite right with them. We had the abiliy to see the words and red flags the characters would let slip through between the lines. Just like Bradley's painting, a veritable image of the feeling of love set in a table setting of a feast of light yet remember there wasn't something quite right with it? There were no people. No one to share it ...more

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Aaron rated it:

10/18/07

Read in October, 2007

Charles Baxter wakes up in the middle of the night and decides to take a stroll around the neighborhood. He makes his way to the local football stadium where he spies a young couple making love on the fifty yard line. So begins The Feast of Love.

Mr. Baxter's old friend Bradley is at the heart of this novel, a kaleidoscope of converging stories and characters. Bradley has been married twice. Once to Kathryn (who leaves him for a woman), and once to Diana (who leaves him for David, the ...more

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melissa/missy rated it:

08/22/08

Read in August, 2008

Charles Baxter's prose is lyrical and lovely in Feast of Love, and I felt like I learned a lot about about voice and POV as I read, but... well, I suppose it's just not the kind of book that really speaks to me. A whole book about love affairs and sex (unrealistic sex at that)? What about everything else in these characters' lives? And philosophically: Isn't there just MORE to life, more that deserves our attention? Maybe some people would argue that there isn't --after all, there's an entir...more

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6 comments

Sarah Montambo rated it:

02/18/08

Read in February, 2008

recommended to Sarah Montambo by: Marie Sweeney
recommends it for: Nikki Williams

Charles Baxter can write. An eclectic cast of characters can really annoy you, sometimes, but as he portrayed them as real rather than zany, I managed to care about each one (except for Madame Maggaroulian, as I must admit that I will never be able to take a psychic seriously).

He tied up the appropriate loose ends and left all the right ones dangling. Did any of you ever see Singles? It's not a great movie, but it has always stuck with me for one reason. It ended all tidy, and if ...more

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Jessica rated it:

08/28/08

bookshelves: current-lit

Read in August, 2008

This is August's book club selection...and so far I have read 50 pages which is really good for me! I like it, although at times I get frustrated b/c the author knows far more than he's saying and I don't know what he knows. I wonder if this is really the story of how he wrote this book.

Well the above question wasn't really answered unfortunately. But overall I liked the book, even managing to finish the book the night before book club :) Most of these characters seem like they could be ...more

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Robin rated it:

04/21/08

bookshelves: cont--fiction

Read in March, 2008

Once again a literary conceit, this time the author ("Charlie") being a character who interviews the other characters to obtain their love stories. I liked the stories themselves, and they did link up to a larger narrative that oozed with humanity. The characterizations were great. I guess the conceit was justified in that he wanted to talk about what it means to have an audience, and how that changes the story and the first-person shifting perspective. But I could have done w/o it...more

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Lisa rated it:

01/10/08

Read in January, 2008

I fell instantly for this book -- the writing is lovely and clear, and Baxter's images and metaphors are startling and precise.

But then he moves away from these vignettes of people's love lives and their deep but funny meditations on them. He narrows the novel to a fairly dramatic ending, and even though this brings several of the previously unrelated characters together, it felt as though we were losing voices instead of gaining or synthesizing them. I still very much enjoyed the book as a...more

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Tung rated it:

01/09/08

Read in January, 2005

My favorite writer is Robert Olen Butler because of his gifted prose. I haven’t read many authors that can match up to Butler on a technical level, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that Baxter does a great Butler imitation. What Butler does best is tell stories from the main character’s perspective, using internal thought processes and streams of consciousness to make you identify with the characters. Baxter does a similar thing here. Feast of Love is about love (obviously), told thro...more

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Angela rated it:

12/21/07

Read in December, 2007

I want to take a writing class from Baxter. Here's how it goes: each chapter is told from the perspective of one of his main characters, which run the gamut from old to young, black to white, and male to female (talk about versatility!). This technique might strike you as gimmicky, but it ain't. When you start on a new chapter, you can tell right away who's narrating it. Baxter's execution of this style is nearly flawless - one main voice overarches everyone, but linguistic nuances generate diff...more

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Brittany rated it:

09/02/08

Read in August, 2008

some of my favorite passages:
-the problem with love and god, the two of them, is how to say anything about them that doesn't annihilate them instantly with the wrong words, with untruth.
-...i'll tell you something to keep your spirits elevated. i just recalled this. something your grandfather once told me. this was his cure for low spirits. when you pour your first cup of coffee of the day, if you're feeling crummy, put a dab of ice cream into it. it's festive. then you gotta trudge off like...more

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Carolanne rated it:

02/18/08

bookshelves: all-time-favorites

Read in February, 2008

recommends it for: people who like to read about love & relationships

This book was awesome! I like Sarah said, hope he writes more!!

***Once again, I am not finished yet, only about 150 pages into it. But I think that this book is brilliant and by reading it, it is changing the way I feel about my self. It is pointing out some major things I knew were missing in my life but was trying to pretend were actually there. Which makes me depressed and confused. Reading it on yesterday (Valentines day) did not make anything better. only worse.
I really like how Bax...more

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gwen rated it:

06/28/07

Read in June, 2007

Oh, did I love this book. Clever, but not for the sake of being clever; self-aware, but not self-absorbed. And so beautiful. Charles Baxter himself is the narrator, visible only periodically, and his neighbor Bradley is telling his own story intertwined with those of people he knows.

I turned down about 15 different pages that had passages I liked... here are two:

The upshot of it was, I kept Bradley. I fed him and petted him and I built him a doghouse and called his name when I came home...more

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Beth rated it:

02/03/08

Read in February, 2008

Baxter is one of the more competent authors now writing. This book (published in 2000)is structurally interesting. The frame story is Baxter himself who has insomnia and who wanders around his neighborhood at 4 a.m. eventually collecting the love stories of several interrelated people. There's Bradley who has a dog named Bradley. Bradley the man has been married twice --- and each marriage is described both from Bradley's point of view and his two wives's points of view. There's Chloe and ...more

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Alika rated it:

02/25/08

bookshelves: fiction

Read in March, 2008

recommends it for: Insomniacs bleeding from cupid's arrow

You can tell that Charles Baxter really loves his characters and that he poured a lot of his soul into creating this book. He uses the devise of multiple first-person narratives to tell their stories, but never once is the reader confused as to who's speaking. The prose is straightforward and honest and I think Baxter might have decided to use the 1st person to get closer to the characters than a 3rd person would allow. Who knows, but it definitely works, and we get a series of relationships whi...more

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Jessica Louise rated it:

(review of isbn 0375410198)

04/28/08

Read in April, 2008

The characters in The Feast of Love are interesting, but they lack depth. And pretty much all they talk about is sex, which gets old. But I guess I should have been expecting that, given the title of the novel.

Charles Baxter writes well, and he can create some really memorable scenes. I liked the bar scene where Bradley and his wife sit next to each other while she falls in love with a woman. I liked the power outage in the mall coffee shop where Bradley meets his second wife. And I liked t...more

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Marie rated it:

02/04/08

Read in January, 2008

recommended to Marie by: wordstock

(Feb) This book almost got 5 stars because it's the first time I can remember being enamored of a teenage character. Typically I can't stand teenagers and I avoid anything that might remind me they exist, not so with this book.

The book is a collection of stories dealing with relationship (husband/wife, child/parent, boyfriend/girlfriend etc) I found the child/parent relationship to be compelling mostly in it's ambiguity and lack of resolution but for sheer entertainment value - I loved Chlo...more

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