Feast of Love, by Charles Baxter
This book nearly sat on my shelf unread, amongst the other paperbacks that my mother recommends. She drops them off in stacks, and I usually ignore them for awhile and then return them during a rare borrowed-book purge. (Note to friends: My apartment is a paperback black hole. Do not lend me treasured books. Actually, a black hole isn’t the greatest metaphor, because the paperbacks do actually re-emerge, albeit unpredictably. But I believe you take my point.)
I typically don’t read the books that my mother brings me, because they tend to fail my “no dead babies” standard – meaning that I don’t like unsubtle attempts at pathos and sentimentality, of which the “dead baby” plot device is an especially egregious example. Also, this book was made into a recently released movie, and thus had small pictures of the involved actors on the front cover, including Greg Kinnear. (They can’t all be “Little Miss Sunshine,” people.) But I took a chance on it during a novel drought, and I am glad glad glad.
Fiction writers, read this book, and marvel. Charles Baxter is a uniquely kind and gifted writer, with a rare respect for his characters. I did not think that a novel could simultaneously be so funny and so immensely humane. He brings together a disparate group of Ann Arbor residents and has them tell their stories to a mysterious fellow named, yes, “Charles Baxter.” But this is no meta-exercise – it’s an incredibly wise and entertaining meditation on love and its place in our lives.
Now, when I am trying to write, I think of this book and his characters and am a little bit discouraged, but mostly inspired. I almost missed out on this book – and I hope that you don’t.
