Customer Reviews

The Feast of Love: A Novel

5 star:		(56)
4 star:		(38)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

This may be my favorite book that I have ever read. It is absolute magic. Plot is secondary. This story, instead, is an exploration into different kinds of love. It twists and meanders without a clear destination, much like love itself. Along the way, we meet slightly otherworldly characters. Most of all, we get to listen to Baxter write. And he can WRITE! Reading this novel is like reading the most beautiful poetry by Frost and Yeats put into prose form. The words alone would be almost enough, but the words combined with the wonderful stories will simply take your breath away.

I found something to identify with in each and every one of the characters in this book. Some characters I actually fell in love with--Chloe and Oscar, with their perfect, intense love; Bradley, with his immutable optimism and his desire to help his lover in every possible way; the Ginsburgs and their perpetual, unconditional love for their children; Bradley's dog, Bradley, who perfectly illustrates why people have pets (or why pets have people).

Some characters are certainly less magical, like Diana and the Bat. But they do not qualify as villains. They have a place in this novel, and it is not to be a mere foil to the types of love depicted by Chloe, Oscar, the Bradleys and the Ginsburgs.

I really cannot heap enough praise on this masterpiece. I have plans to reread The Feast of Love forthwith.

This book is amazing and a 2004 must read for both guys and gals! If you enjoyed movies like Short Cuts or 6 Degree's of Separation you will love this book and understand how it's laid out (i.e. separate characters - living separate lives - somehow connected). This book proved to me that ANY unique thought, personality trait, quirk/tick, phrase/snappy word selection, word choice, vision, day dream, fear, insecurity, issue, event, etc. that I thought was truly unique to ME and made me different from everyone else is/was a big farce. Charles Baxter was able to provide me with a 'grow up' wake up call - prove to me that there is nothing original nor unique about me or how I think or what I say or how I act, etc. My entire 'supposedly unique character/self' is smeared across every character (male and female) in this book. All men over the age of 30 should be required to read this book.

I see this book compared to Plato's Symposium in the critical blurbs. That's fair enough - Baxter references it himself in the book. I admire any writer who can write about philosophy so effortlessly while not being boring. As soon as one of the characters claimed to be obsessed with Kierkegaard, I was hooked.

Yes, this book is a feast of love. It is about romantic love in all its aspects - young and not so young. The most adorable couple in the book are the teenagers Oscar and Chloe (pronounced "Klow-Ay"). They are just punks who spend most of their time having sex, but their dreams are surprisingly traditional.

Don't be scared off if you think that a book about love is going to be sappy - it isn't. Baxter breathes life into all of his diverse characters. We come to feel for them - their dreams, their fears, and their frustrations. When tragedy finally strikes, we are so involved we become heartbroken too.

Baxter writes in an interview style, effectively giving us multiple first-person narrators. The conversational writing quickly hooks the reader and moves him briskly along. It is like an Altman film - there is no central character, just an interesting journey into the lives and loves of these Midwestern people. A very good read.

This is a nice book, with a variety of brooding characters who are involved in different love affairs. I enjoyed the dreamy quality of the prose and how all the characters lives, although mundane, were described in a poetic way, as if trascending their own existence.

In summary, I found this book a pleasant and high-quality quick read. Recommended!

Wonderful characters; wonderful dialogue; wonderful humor; wonderful everything. I want to make sure I get my 5 stars in. I just read Anne Tyler's Amateur Marriage, and this is much more enjoyable, actually like some of Tyler's best books.

This was one of our picks for book club and it generated terrific discussion. The entire title/theme centers around a painting one of the characters did. Original plot, premise, and treatment. Well written, finely drawn characters, deftly made connections, just a really great book. Don't hesitate here. Read it; share it with a friend though... Because you will want to discuss this with someone.

Charles Baxter, an acclaimed master of the short story, proves himself equally adept as a novelist in The Feast of Love. The writer "Charlie" scrambles out of bed late at night because of a recurrent nightmare and decides to take a walk. A few blocks from his house, he encounters Bradley, an acquaintance and fellow insomniac who is walking his dog (also named Bradley.) There, in the middle of the night in Ann Arbor, Bradley the human dictates the title and characters of the novel Charlie should be writing. What follows then is pure structural brilliance: Charlie, as an invisible interviewer, pursues the "real" people who have touched Bradley's life: ex-wives Kathryn and Diana, young employees Chloé and Oscar, neighbors Harry and Esther - and the people who affect them. Each character tells a part of the story in his or her own voice. Soon, Charlie the interviewer fades into the background, emerging only when details that he has revealed at the beginning appear in the lives of his characters and thus remind the reader that, in true metafiction style, this fiction has a creator.

These love stories tell of mistaken love and true love - and the heartbreak that comes with both. Although they begin as separate tales, by the end they converge, bringing the novel together in a heartwarming whole. Baxter's prose is, as always, precisely clear. The distinct voices of the narration are superbly handled, especially in the case of Chloé, who is the most memorable character in the novel.

Charles Baxter fans should not pass up this extraordinary novel. If you like the metafiction in Ian McEwan's Atonement or the quirkiness of Anne Tyler's characters, you should appreciate this novel.

It is a terrible injustice that this book seems to have been largely ignored by critics and readers, enjoying a modest success when it should be hailed a contemporary classic.

Baxter tells an ordinary tale with such love and respect for his characters that you feel humbled and moved by its contents. There is nothing spectacular about this book and that is the whole point. In the same way as a writer like Anne Tyler can create magic from seemingly ordinary situations, Baxter draws you in to a deceptively simple scenario and steals your heart.

A wonder.

This is the book other books about love would like to be--written in perfect prose, at all times passionate but also capable of detachment, proving itself to have been written by an artist as well as a philosopher. Proust, Hemingway, Faulkner--Baxter takes a place on a shelf in their company.

If you like your sentiments heavy-handed and your cliches in great big servings, this is the novel for you. I have to admit, I put it down on page 107, figuring that if, after a hundred pages, I had not read a single thought I couldn't have read on a Hallmark card, I wasn't going to waste any more of my time. My advice to those who are thinking of reading this novel: Try thinking about love as shallowly as you possibly can for a few hours instead. It will be the same in the end.