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National Book Award Finalist From "one of our most gifted writers" (Chicago Tribune), here is a superb new novel that delicately unearths the myriad manifestations of extraordinary love between ordinary people. The Feast of Love is just that -- a sumptuous work of fiction about the thing that most distracts and delights us. In a re-imagined Midsummer Night's Dream, men and women speak of and desire their ideal mates; parents seek out their lost children; adult children try to come to terms with their own parents and, in some cases, find new ones. In vignettes both comic and sexy, the owner of a coffee shop recalls the day his first wife seemed to achieve a moment of simple perfection, while she remembers the women's softball game during which she was stricken by the beauty of the shortstop. A young couple spends hours at the coffee shop fueling the idea of their fierce love. A professor of philosophy, stopping by for a cup of coffee, makes a valiant attempt to explain what he knows to be the inexplicable workings of the human heart Their voices resonate with each other -- disparate people joined by the meanderings of love -- and come together in a tapestry that depicts the most irresistible arena of life. Crafted with subtlety, grace, and power, The Feast of Love is a masterful novel. "Supurb.... A near perfect book, as deep as it is broad in its humaneness, comedy and wisdom." -- The Washington Post Book World
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Review:
Charles Baxter's novel The Feast Of Love, short-listed for The National Book Award 2000, is a beguiling and cerebral work. It opens with the sleepless author or at least a narrator purporting to be the author and using his name, wandering the streets of his hometown. He bumps into his old associate Bradley W Smith who, also an insomniac, proceeds to tell him a true story, which gives the narrator the idea and title for the book.
Review:
Baxter the narrator continues to pursue the story that Bradley begins. He proceeds to interview Bradley's friends, former lovers, neighbours and colleagues. These interviews, which become more like confessionals, act as individual vignettes. Meet Kathryn, Bradley's first wife; Diana, his second; Harry Ginsberg, his philosopher neighbour and Chloe his dysfunctional employee. At times this artifice can almost cloy. The narrator who is and is not the author, the characters who may or may not be real, tales that may or may not be fictions. But the quote at the beginning of the novel from Samuel Beckett's Molloy gives hint at the intention behind this disorientating device:
Yes, there were times when I forgot not only who I was but that I was, forgot to be.It seems as though we as readers are being asked to question the very core of our identities.
The novel's crux seems to be that love is central to human nature and identity. Baxter, our lost and troubled soul, unable to sleep, journeys in pursuit of this idea to find peace. And Baxter the author succeeds in revealing the delicacy of relationships, their meanings and their power:
...what if the love we feel, what if that's central, what if it's what makes the world's soul possible, what if it's what made the world and keeps it running...--Iain Robinson
"Superb--a near-perfect book, as deep as it is broad in its humaneness, comedy and wisdom."-The Washington Post Book World
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- PublisherVintage
- Publication date2001
- ISBN 10 037570910X
- ISBN 13 9780375709104
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages320
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. National Book Award Finalist A superb novel that delicately unearths the myriad manifestations of extraordinary love between ordinary people, from "one of our most gifted writers" (Chicago Tribune) and the winner of the PEN/Malamud Award "A near perfect book, as deep as it is broad in its humaneness, comedy and wisdom." The Washington PostThe Feast of Love is just thata sumptuous work of fiction about the thing that most distracts and delights us. In a re-imagined Midsummer Night's Dream, men and women speak of and desire their ideal mates; parents seek out their lost children; adult children try to come to terms with their own parents and, in some cases, find new ones. In vignettes both comic and sexy, the owner of a coffee shop recalls the day his first wife seemed to achieve a moment of simple perfection, while she remembers the women's softball game during which she was stricken by the beauty of the shortstop. A young couple spends hours at the coffee shop fueling the idea of their fierce love. A professor of philosophy, stopping by for a cup of coffee, makes a valiant attempt to explain what he knows to be the inexplicable workings of the human heart Their voices resonate with each otherdisparate people joined by the meanderings of loveand come together in a tapestry that depicts the most irresistible arena of life. Crafted with subtlety, grace, and power, The Feast of Love is a masterful novel. In vignettes both comic and sexy, men and women speak of and desire the ideal mates who may be hiding in the unmapped sphere of possibilities in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780375709104
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