false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170976177m/79982.jpg 79982 10 Poor Charles Baxter, doomed to be forever thought of as a writer's writer. The languidly plotted <I>Saul and Patsy</I> hardly promises to be his long-awaited breakout novel. It's just too quiet. But for those of us who fervently admire Baxter's prose, that's a selling point. In this tale of a Midwestern marriage, there's lots of time and space for the author to show off his incisive style, studded with the kind of subtle observations that make you stop, laugh, and then feel oddly lanced somewhere in the neighborhood of the soul. <p> Saul Bernstein has become a high school teacher because he feels a need "to contribute to what he called 'the great project of undoing the dumbness that's been done.'" He and his wife Patsy live in small-town Michigan, where their "love for each other had created a magic circle around themselves that outsiders could not penetrate. No one who had ever met them knew what made the two of them tick; the whole arrangement looked mildly fraudulent." There's a glitch in this idyll, though. One of Saul's students, a mildly retarded boy named Gordy, takes to haunting their house, maybe with malicious intent, maybe not. Gordy hangs around, Saul and Patsy have a baby, and then finally a crisis provokes Saul to decide what kind of man he'd like to be. The novel is, in the end, a portrait not of a marriage, but of an ambivalent, evasive, very funny man. Along the way, we get to know Saul's fed-up wife, his fraudulent brother, and his libidinous mother, who makes this observation of Saul: "As a father, he exhibited great tenderness, which had a touch of vanity in it." It's a classic Baxter aside, at first mildly funny, then barbed with the truth. <I>--Claire Dederer</I> 1265499 2003 Saul and Patsy total:415|5:50|4:132|3:155|2:51|1:27| 415 1372 556 60 79982 0375709169 9780375709166 388 56 3.31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170976177m/79982.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79982.Saul_and_Patsy 4 1 false Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 15 18:15:50 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 16 23:12:27 -0700 2009 more...]]> 79982 0375709169 9780375709166 388 56 3.31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170976177m/79982.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79982.Saul_and_Patsy 4 0 false Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun May 31 19:46:13 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 09 06:22:21 -0700 2009 more...]]> 79982 0375709169 9780375709166 388 56 3.31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170976177m/79982.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79982.Saul_and_Patsy 4 0 false Tue Dec 09 09:56:22 -0800 2008 Tue Dec 09 09:56:42 -0800 2008 more...]]> 79982 0375709169 9780375709166 388 56 3.31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170976177m/79982.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79982.Saul_and_Patsy 2 1 false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Oct 09 11:23:45 -0700 2007 Tue Oct 09 11:28:44 -0700 2007 79982 0375709169 9780375709166 388 56 3.31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170976177m/79982.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79982.Saul_and_Patsy 1 1 false Tue Oct 16 13:37:51 -0700 2007 Wed Oct 24 18:17:37 -0700 2007 saul is a really forced cliched character. baxter does a horrible job of attempting to create a realistic "neurotic jewish" guy. it's been done before, by far better writers.]]> 79982 0375709169 9780375709166 388 56 3.31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170976177m/79982.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79982.Saul_and_Patsy 1 0 false Sat Mar 03 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Tue May 06 07:51:48 -0700 2008 Fri Jul 11 10:20:52 -0700 2008 more...]]> 79982 0375709169 9780375709166 388 56 3.31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170976177m/79982.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79982.Saul_and_Patsy 4 0 false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sat Feb 28 22:56:02 -0800 2009 Sun Mar 01 09:39:15 -0800 2009
Some minor issues, but overall, any complaints seem akin to troubleshooting black and white movies for a lack of sh...more...]]> 79982 0375709169 9780375709166 388 56 3.31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170976177m/79982.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79982.Saul_and_Patsy 0 0 false Fri May 08 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat May 09 10:45:39 -0700 2009 Sat May 09 10:56:50 -0700 2009 more...]]> 79982 0375709169 9780375709166 388 56 3.31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170976177m/79982.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79982.Saul_and_Patsy 3 0 false Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Mar 18 08:28:01 -0700 2008 Sun Mar 23 18:22:48 -0700 2008 more...]]> 79982 0375709169 9780375709166 388 56 3.31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170976177m/79982.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79982.Saul_and_Patsy 1 0 false Mon Jan 05 15:58:31 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 05 15:59:55 -0800 2009
My kingdom for an engrossing novel! Since New Year's I seem to be stalled in bad fiction and hard-to-get-through non-fiction. ]]> 79982 0375709169 9780375709166 388 56 3.31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170976177m/79982.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79982.Saul_and_Patsy 3 0 false Mon Sep 14 18:20:29 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 14 18:48:44 -0700 2009 1276524 0375410295 9780375410291 26 4 3.31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182446764m/1276524.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1276524.Saul_and_Patsy_A_Novel 4 0 false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Jul 16 17:26:50 -0700 2007 Sat Aug 11 17:11:48 -0700 2007 more...]]> 79982 0375709169 9780375709166 388 56 3.31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170976177m/79982.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79982.Saul_and_Patsy 3 0 false Wed Apr 15 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 01 18:48:19 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 15 20:39:36 -0700 2009 79982 0375709169 9780375709166 388 56 3.31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170976177m/79982.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79982.Saul_and_Patsy 4 0 false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 25 14:16:04 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 25 14:17:20 -0800 2009 79982 0375709169 9780375709166 388 56 3.31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170976177m/79982.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79982.Saul_and_Patsy 2 0 false Thu Jun 04 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue May 19 14:18:28 -0700 2009 Thu Jun 04 06:14:39 -0700 2009 79982 0375709169 9780375709166 388 56 3.31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170976177m/79982.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79982.Saul_and_Patsy 3 0 false Fri Apr 25 13:35:10 -0700 2008 Mon Oct 29 14:55:43 -0700 2007 Fri Apr 25 13:32:16 -0700 2008 more...]]> 79982 0375709169 9780375709166 388 56 3.31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170976177m/79982.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79982.Saul_and_Patsy 2 0 true Wed Jul 30 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 23 13:58:24 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 30 15:11:48 -0700 2008 more...]]> 79982 0375709169 9780375709166 388 56 3.31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170976177m/79982.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79982.Saul_and_Patsy 4 0 false Sat Aug 26 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Sat Feb 28 13:24:14 -0800 2009 Sat Feb 28 13:24:14 -0800 2009 79982 0375709169 9780375709166 388 56 3.31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170976177m/79982.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79982.Saul_and_Patsy 1 0 false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Mar 30 15:51:06 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 09 17:18:59 -0700 2009 79982 0375709169 9780375709166 388 56 3.31 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170976177m/79982.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79982.Saul_and_Patsy 1 0 false Wed Mar 04 12:32:22 -0800 2009 Wed Mar 04 12:32:37 -0800 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=79982