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 streets, while reading a work of fiction.The novel opens with a writer named Charles Baxter who, suffering from insomnia, goes out for a midnight walk. He wanders into the U of M football stadium (one of those places I know well) and then on to a nearby park where he encounters a neighbor. They strike up a conversation and soon the neighbor, not a writer, starts to give Charles advice about writing a book, including a title and a plan: to talk to various people about love.At this point, sixteen pages about a man taking a walk and describing what he sees followed by some clunky dialogue with his neighbor have me worried. I am definitely not hooked except by the fact that I know exactly where these two men are sitting. I decide to give both Charles Baxters one more chapter. (An odd point is that Bradley, the neighbor, has a dog named Bradley.)By the end of Chapter Two I am intrigued. A story about Bradley and his first failed marriage has unfolded. I had a first failed marriage in Ann Arbor. So I keep going and more characters show up, who are all connected to Bradley in one way or another, who all have relationships of varying success. By the time Oscar and Chloe show up, a pair of quintessential Ann Arbor love children, I find myself completely involved in a feast of love that I hope will never end.Chloe is my favorite character: she is young, reckless, intrepid and believes totally in love. There are several other female characters of different types and Baxter's writing chops are good enough that not one of them comes off as a type. Each is a fully realized personality. He is just as good with the male characters but especially with Harry Ginsberg, a professor of philosophy with a secret sorrow.Bradley continues to be a clunky guy. It was his "bad dialogue" that I objected to, but that turns out to be a product of his personality and in fact, I know a guy from Ann Arbor who is amazingly like Bradley. Every once in a while though, Bradley comes up with a zinger, delivered in his clunky manner: "This song, 'My Funny Valentine,' as sung by Ella Fitzgerald, was going through my head as I walked. I always liked her; I liked it that she sang jazz while wearing glasses."The Feast of Love, which is the name of Bradley's best painting (yes, he is a secret painter though he manages a franchise coffee place in the mall, the one I shopped in for years) turned out to be a little masterpiece of a book, celebrating people, life and love, with all the amazing moments of transcendence and many of the sorrowful depths of loss that most of us experience.The very evening of the day I finished the book, I watched the movie. My advice is just read the book. Morgan Freeman as the Jewish philosophy professor? Please, skip the movie which does not begin to capture the magic of the book. Anyway, it is set in Portland, OR.
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.
What do You think about The Feast Of Love (2001)?
THE FEAST OF LOVE. (2000). Charles Baxter. ***1/2.Charles Baxter iw planning to write a book. It will be a book about ordinary people and the retelling of one of their most extraordinary occurrences. The book is fashioned after the style of “La Ronde,” where the characters serially meet each other and interact. Baxter starts off with Kathryn and Jenny, then we meet Katherine’s husband, Bradley Smith and, importantly, Bradley’s dog, Bradley. Next we meet Chloe and Oscar, two employees at Bradley’s coffee shop in the mall. The two begin a relationship, but it is interrupted by Oscar’s dad, the Bat. It is all very clever, and Baxter is enough of a wordsmith to meticulously describe each of his characters and their behavior. It is a well-done story with the plot skillfully driven forward through action and thought to hold the reader’s interest. Recommended.
—Tony
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!!!
—Empress
I've read this book about ten times and bought it at least four times because I keep giving my copies away to friends. Over time, I've come to see that it's not a perfect book - certain turns of phrase clunk, certain character traits don't ring true. But it's perfect to me, and no matter how many times I've read it, there are still passages that blow me away, move me to tears, and strike me as profoundly true and correct.There are also lines that I've never noticed before that get my attention on each new read. Most recently, I fell in love with this one:"As my mother once said to me, They're quite crazy, dear - men are. What you look for is one of them whose insanity is large enough, and calm and generous enough, to include you."
—Mary McCoy
