Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Mar 10, 2011

Emily rated it:

Uh, no. Boring. Charles Baxter has an anoying writing style that got on my nerves, Charles does. The dialog was written horribly, not at all like actual people conversing. And I am not just talking about the two youth characters. All of the characters. They were unnecassarily repetitive. The two youth were the worst though. I know that he was trying emulate the way immature 20-year-olds would actually talk, but . . . gag! I could barely plow through one particular passage were the two idiots wer More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 21, 2008

Matthew rated it:

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 More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Oct 22, 2007

Empress rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

gwen rated it:

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 More...

2 comments like (6 people liked it)

Feb 12, 2009

Sally rated it:

Baxter's novel unfolds like an origami swan. The entire concept is beautiful and intricate. Upon first inspection it wows. How complex! Amazing! What an original narrative, layering individual perspectives within, among, alongside one overarching meta-narrative. The whole novel is deeply hyper-conscious of its own creation from page one.

The characters, residents of the same Michinan town are all comfortably familiar, sketched as someone recognizable. Baxter illuminates Ann Ar More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 07, 2009

York rated it:

Este libro tiene rato que lo terminé y ahí tantos tonos que me evoca, no sé por dónde empezar, mucho menos qué veredicto darle.

El inicio es enorme y cálido, las intenciones de Baxter son impresionantes y no estoy seguro que lo logre a grado técnico, pero en todo lo demás lo logra con honores... hay pasajes muy bellos, otros bastante intensos...

La pasión de los amantes, el absurdo de las coincidencias, y que sin embargo marcan el rumbo de nuestros sentidos, la idea de pas More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 09, 2009

Crystal rated it:

A dear friend told me about this book several years ago. I bought it, like I always do, and there it sat on my shelf for years - waiting to be read. When asked for a book club suggestion, I gazed at my shelf and it screamed at me "pick me! pick me!" So, it won the suggestion and became the early January pick for book club.

It was beautiful. Well written, heartfelt, and just an overall good read. It was a terrific portrayal of how, despite our good intentions, some thi More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 15, 2009

ramona rated it:

There are few books that have possessed me -- taken ahold of me, owned me, inhabited me -- like Feast of Love has. I have been dreaming about the characters. I have been dreaming about reading the book, which is also like living inside the book. I will be thinking about Nude Descending a Staircase, as a painting and as a metaphor, and the next chapter I pick up will mention the painting. I will read a chapter that uses votive candles as a reality and as a metaphor and I will close the book a More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Aug 22, 2008

melissa/missy rated it:

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...

6 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 11, 2008

Richard rated it:

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...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 09, 2008

Tung rated it:

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 through More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 07, 2008

Jamie rated it:

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...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 10, 2008

Lisa rated it:

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 b More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Nov 28, 2008

Katherine rated it:

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this book. It has become an all time favorite (for teh moment :). I can't quite articulate what about it I love so much. It's a good story told in an interesting way. The dialogue is perfect. I just find it so inspiring as a writer. He breaks the rules and he tells a good story.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 11, 2009

Adam rated it:

Not pretentious in the least. A story about finding family and love in the lonesome crowded Midwest. The Feast of Love is a light, yet penetrating look into the lives of others through the eyes of their acquaintances, friends and misbegotten lovers. At once humorous and serious (sometimes even dark) Baxter weaves a tapestry of interconnected lives that by the end comes across not as the effort of a skillful writer, but a genuine beauty that emerged from an otherwise pathetic group of people. And More...

1 comment like

Jan 20, 2012

Maria rated it:

I read this book a few years ago, and, if I had rated it right after I finished it, I would have given it perhaps two or three stars, since The Feast of Love isn't typically the type of book I enjoy reading. However, over the years, I would catch myself remembering the characters in this book when I come upon certain situations in real life. There's just something about each character's situation that makes me consider other people's life instead of just being enmeshed in mine.

Being More...

0 comments like

Dec 26, 2011

Katherine rated it:

Something about the cover art and the back blurb always led me to assume that The Feast of Love was yet another tiresome novel about a couple of suburban white people whose marriage slowly collapsed. And, okay, that's one of the intertwining plots, but DAMN, did I ever misjudge this one.

The Feast of Love is really about a group of people whose otherwise ordinary lives are suffused and driven by transcendence and love. It's got a continuously shifting point of view (each chapter is narr More...

0 comments like

Oct 04, 2011

Whitney rated it:

Charles Baxter’s The Feast of Love is described as a sumptuous work of fiction about the thing that most distracts and delights us (Chicago Tribune). Compared to Midsummer Night’s Dream, this novel explores the lives of individuals when love becomes a complicated factor.
Beginning the novel Charlie Baxter leaves his house for a midnight walk through his Ann Arbor neighborhood. Passing two love stricken individuals on the fifty-yard line of a football field Baxter eventually encounters a fr More...

0 comments like

Aug 27, 2011

Erik rated it:

Even when the staunchest romantics are told how a particular book contains the perfect ruminations on love, life, and happiness it can surely produce that groan-inducing, finger-down-the-throat heaving effect. Well, The Feast of Love is a book that is strongly based on these themes, but I assure you, it will not make you sick by any means. Here you will find a book that encompasses all the elements that delight the romantics, engage the literary readers, or captivate those who simply want a good More...

0 comments like

Apr 05, 2011

George rated it:

“The Feast of Love”
By: Charles Baxter
Pantheon Books
New York, 2000

Enriching, poignant, heart breaking, and bold are all words that are now synonymous of the work of the American author Charles Baxter in his novel entitled “The Feast of Love.” This third, and possibly best, novel from Baxter is about a character (also named Charles Baxter) as he sorts through the lives of a few people who tend to intermingle throughout the story. The novel begins with Baxter learning More...

0 comments like

Apr 05, 2011

Jared rated it:

Book: The Feast of Love
Author: Charles Baxter
Publishing info: Pantheon Books, New York, 2000

“The Feast of Love” by Charles Baxter is a book about just that, love. It takes the first person view of various people seemingly known to the author, from the sadness of a manager of a coffee shop and his wives to a teenager bright with new love. Taking place in Michigan and at various times, it starts with the author – Charlie, as he is called in the book – taking a walk late at nigh More...

0 comments like

Feb 16, 2011

Shelley rated it:

"The Feast of Love"
By: Charles Baxter
Pantheon Books
New York, 2000

Love inspires, hinders, strengthens, and consumes the imagination in Charles Baxter’s riveting tale The Feast of Love. In 2001, the novel placed as a finalist for the National Book Award and shortly after was transformed into film. Blending together numerous short stories, Baxter develops a community falling under love’s tantalizing spell. Whether it breaks the heart or fuses its piec More...

0 comments like

Jul 19, 2010

Judy rated it:

I read this because I was planning to watch the movie. The book was full of surprises. I knew that Charles Baxter taught at the University of Michigan, a school I once attended, but was delighted to find The Feast of Love set in Ann Arbor, MI, where I lived for many years. I often read just for the pleasure and experience of being taken to places I will probably never go to myself, but there is a unique pleasure to recognizing the details of weather, types of people, buildings and st More...

0 comments like

Mar 26, 2010

Kate rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like

Apr 27, 2009

Corina rated it:

If an older, male author is seized by the urge to speak through the mouth of a pierced, teenage nymphette, he'd better do it convincingly. The parts of this book narrated by the earnestly vapid Chloe read a little like how old men impersonating young girls in chat rooms must come off. She intersperses slang with a few ten-cent words like "mellifluous" (and then reassures us she looked the word up somewhere so we won't suspect she's really an aging academic) and, at one point refers to More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 11, 2009

Nancy rated it:

January’s book club selection, chosen by me. As it turned out, I, and absent Helen, were the only ones of the group who liked the book. Helen wrote, “ I rather like this book- like the author’s style….Couldn’t help feeling sorry for someone who could envision a Feast of Love and paint it, while not believing it exists. How empty a soul!” I enjoyed, though didn’t necessarily like, all the characters. I could empathize and understand each character’s story. I liked how they were all connecte More...

0 comments like

Dec 17, 2009

Matthew rated it:

This is a book I often recommend when asked to recommend a book by someone whose taste I don't know well.

It's not that it's "safe" (although everyone seems to like it) but that it's one of those transcendent middebrow books like Salinger's--Shawshank Redemption, which everyone also likes, does the same thing in the movie genre--that confirms everything you already thought or wanted to believe, and makes it seem richer than you'd ever thought. For which I'm grateful.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 03, 2009

Erik rated it:

First off, let me say that the title seems at bit misleading to me. So if you're thinking of reading it based on that, read some more reviews and change your expectations. It makes sense in that it refers to a painting in the novel and what the artist intended with his painting. It's not much of a feel-good novel, and I don't think it fully explores all sides of love as some of the reviewers claim. In fact, there seemed to be too much of the ugly side of love in this novel, and a few times it le More...

0 comments like

Feb 15, 2011

Mick rated it:

The Feast of Love is written from the perspective of a group of people whose lives intersect and even meld together in some cases, briefly and also permanent. Charles Baxter starts the story from his own point of view where drawn to Michigan Stadium on a insomnia fueled walk, he finds unexpected company with a man named Bradley smith. It is there that the reader is given some insight to how the title of the book came about, later it is explained that it was actually one of Bradley’s painting wh More...

0 comments like

Sep 20, 2009

Alison rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like