Rating: 
Summary: The Perfect Feast for Summer
Review: In The Feast of Love, Charles Baxter exposes the very truth and nature of love. He has created a novel that will satiate your thirst for a heated summer romance. The reader is graced with a vision of love at its greatest, most delectable moment. True to life, many of the relationships end in sadness and pain. This is a compilation of stories all wound together to make one incredible tale of seven relationships of all different ages, and the journey they each take to make it last. With perseverance and unrelenting passion, each lover dives into bed, effervescent with a soul-searching frame of mind. Although what each couple finds may not be true love, their experiences provide an innovative philosophy of life, one that stretches up inside to arouse their deepest spirits. It is this awakened spirit that generates their feast of love. Though the introduction wasn't necessary, it added an inviting undertone to the book, one that allowed the reader to feel familiar with the story before it even began. Baxter begins the novel with a character's personal account of his experiences with love. His one narrative enfolds into a series of others' tales, where Charlie, (narrator) takes on the role as the omniscient and taciturn interviewer. At times, however, it is frustrating to hear only one side of a conversation when discussing the depths of a character's life and most intimate romance. It often leaves the reader skeptical; wondering how credible it is for a person to pour out his or her most intrinsic and passionate exposés to a total stranger. What I most admired about The Feast of Love was Charles Baxter's ability to make the characters and their relationships immensely realistic. Each portrayal of the lovers is so convincing that they truly come to life. Long after you've put the book down they linger on in your imagination. Charles also has an endless capacity to entice the reader; one can't wait to see what happens next. He has created an engrossing tale filled with riveting emotion, humor, family trauma and genuine tragedy that reaches into the hearts of every reader. Charles has combined profound passion with a taste of Shakespearean romance and a dynamic and spirited adventure in and out of the sheets. It is both pleasurable and agonizing; an overall joyful reading experience.
Rating: 
Summary: Heartfelt Almost Until the End
Review: I grew to like the characters in this book, especially Charlie. The author's description of mall life are very engaging. Malls are soulless when there are no shoppers or people in them. When I was a college student I worked for J.C. Penney at a couple of malls (one in California and one in Michigan). I remember looking out into the mall before the customers were let in. There was a forlornness, a vacuousness that wallowed in the air and settled on everything you could see. The products, the objects themselves seemed to have no meaning, no purpose, without the will and desire, the energy of the customers. Their presence, their energy, their drive- gave the mall, the stores, the products, my job.... meaning. I am sure most of them did not think of themselves as meaning makers, and that without them it was all without any essential value, but it was and is true nonetheless. Baxter captures this world, and what it is like to work in malls. The author also captures the feelings people often have when they are alone in the world, but see couples who are happy and intimate with each other as they walk by. And not intimate in a sexual way in public, but rather that they are in their own world their relationship has created, even though they are in public. Couples like this often look luminous to me, and I am glad to observe their happiness, to know that such happiness exists and always will. That it does not belong to me is bittersweet, but I am not sad about it, because I have known it. Having known it, I can recall those moments and feelings, and it makes me smile. Charlie in the book however, decides to do something unfortunate in regards to these feelings, which leads him into contact with the woman who is presented as his true love. The book works and has cohesivenes, it flows, until we get to this part. This part does not work to the point where I, as a reader, stopped living in the world the author had created and said "Hey wait a minute Baxter, this is isn't working! In fact it seems like a cheap shot! Did you get bored writing this book this late in or what?!!!" When you are holding a book in your hands having this kind of subvocal conversation with the author, you know there is a problem. The love interest, brought into the book so late, never gets to speak. Everyone else gets to speak, but she doesn't. There is also that the way she and Baxter meet is a very unlikely way for a relationship to start. Overall a good read that falls apart at the very end. Which is sad. But I will remember the characters that were well developed, and even now wonder how their lives continued after the last page of the book ended.
Rating:
Summary: What a surprise!
Review: The last book I read was horribly written. This book was really imaginative and the storyline captivated me. The only thing I really detested, like a previous reviewer before me, was that the narration sounded like the same person. When Chloe, a young girl in the story, talks to other people, she "kicks slang," but when she narrates her portion, she speaks in perfect english. I'd expect a professor of Philosophy to go on MORE about OTHER philsophies than one jewish writer/philosopher. I'd expect him to mention something about Albert Camus or kafka. I won't get to particular in which I found upsetting about the book because that's really not what the book is about. The book is about love and the trivials of it. As a reader, I found it interesting. so interesting that I am reading a fantasy/science fiction book because i'm afraid if I read another fiction literature, i'll compare this book with that book and find that the new fiction literature book is not up to par with the Feast of Love. Ha...I hope I didn't confuse you in the last line.
Rating: 
Summary: Needs some tweaking
Review: The Feast of Love leaves the reader awed by Baxter's wonderful characterizations and utterly believable narratives, but dissapointed by the book's hollow format. Baxter sets up an elaborate framework for his novel in the first couple of chapters that is so annoying and completely without significance that I wanted to stop reading it right then and there. The author comes across as being hideously self-conscious and lacking in good ideas. Baxter should have simply dropped the bothersome pretense and written a collection of short stories. This would have done the book's striking and relatable characters greater justice and made for a more readable book. So why read the book? Baxter is full of delightful insights that surprise the reader and keep the book moving. The story of Chloe and Oscar is especially beautiful and unpredicatble. Baxter only rarely rests on the common conceptions and sterotypes that are so evident in much contemporary media. It is this unique view of the emotional reality of love and sex that makes the book worthwhile; Baxter draws on what he knows and therefore connects with the reader in a tangable and powerful way. Baxter has also clearly read some of his contemporaries. I see traces of Don Delillo in his ideas and prose as well as smatterings of David Foster Wallace's brand of self-consciousness, although Baxter does not meet either of these excellent authors at their level of originality and power. Baxter's redemption comes with his humor and emotional power. He does not fail to keep the reader involved in his first person tales of love found and lost, at times simultaneously. The complexity and confusion of his charatcers is an accurate portrail of the mess of feelings that is love; unlike other authors, Baxter does not try to dumb down love's difficulty for the sake of easy reading. His power, infact, comes from the characters' vividness inspite of their relative newness to the reader. Without elaborate background or explication the reader can feel the characters' pulse in the pages, these become people that one can imagine being or atleast knowing. The characters are familiar without being tired mostly because of Baxter's fresh observations and keenly contemporary style. His prose is colloquial to whichever character happens to be speaking and this too keeps things interesting. It allows Baxter to avoid all the cliche language that is commonly associated with fictional love. Baxter does a fairly good job of keeping his own voice out of the charatcers' discussions. When the charatcers are women, Baxter only rarely reveals his own agenda and keeps his male voice fairly absent. Most contemporary critics refuse to believe that men can successfully write women but Baxter provides an example of fairly good cross gender voice. His women are believable as women but his men seem slightly more heartfelt and more vivid. All around the charatcers are very well develpped and in most cases delightful to read. The diversity of their experiences even within a fairly narrow circumstance is pretty remarkable and feels very true. If your looking for character driven reading by a thoughtful and insightful author that only briefly threatens his own work, read The Feast of Love. It is enjoyable reading, gives you something to chew on, and won't bore those interested in the many faces of love.
Rating:
Summary: What a picture he paints!
Review: I for one am glad Baxter couldn't sleep, and when he was roaming in the park, he came across his neighbors, Bradley and Bradley!! The quick-reading chapters are provided by Baxter's characters, making the story read like a "book within a book". Each chapter is a tale told by an individual character. As each shares their story of love and loss, they ultimately meet, and inter-twine with each other, giving us a full portrait. We are reminded after reading this, that love indeed, comes in all shapes; sizes; wants and needs. Baxter has touched a nerve with many, he has also opened hearts of others, by sharing the lives and loves of the people we meet in The Feast of Love. I too have had feelings and thoughts like the characters here. Some painful, some humerous, but most of all, loving. That's life folks - so, pick up a copy of the book, join Baxter on his walk in and around Ann Arbor, and meet his "works of art".
Rating:
Summary: The Feast of Sex
Review: For the first third of the book I felt that it was very choppy and broken up. But, as I got into the book the stories slowly started to fit together. I must say that I could have done without the first chapter. I think that it was a pathetic excuse in order to start the novel. Instead of actually saying in the book "I'm going to write a story about other people's stories that they will tell me" I wish Baxter would have just started in. I would have understood what was going on without the "introduction" chapter. However, once I got into the book I was wrapped up in the love. I really enjoyed the fact that each chapter had a different person talking. The reader was able to see the same event from usually at least two perpsectives, which was very interesting. I also liked the way Baxter left it up to us to compare the stories. We didn't have a narrator constantly coming in and telling us what we should be thinking. I personally liked to compare the way each person thought about love and sex. We got the perspective from a very young couple, a middle aged man, and a slightly older couple. It's also true in my mind that these are not the stereotypical couples of their respective age groups and this was very refreshing. However, one must keep in mind that all the characters in the book were white except for a woman doctor near the very end. This is quite annoying to me because that could have added a completely different spin on the book. I'm not sure if this was a stylistic choice or it just happpened in his writing. I would have liked to find out more about Margaret and why she and Bradley got together. It would have been interesting to hear her voice. This brings me to my next point which is the fact that to my ear most of the characters were written with the same sentence pattern and even their vocabulary didn't really vary. I compare this to the book Twilight which was written right after the LA riots and told the story of many different types of people ( of all races and economic status) in their own words. This is what "The Feast" claimed to do, but in my view didn't deliever. Overall though, I find the stories of the characters very truthful. I feel like I could run into any one of the characters on the street. That is very neccessary for me to then believe the love between them. Without them being realistic characters the feast of love would not have been a feast but a small meal.
Rating:
Summary: A great book
Review: Baxter does an excellent job bringing you to Ann Arbor, Mich and introducing you to these wonderful characters. You are pulled in from the beginning and the conversations (explainations) of these people lives are like one on one conversations over lunch and coffee. You can relate to the characters and even know people like them. Stop! Read this book and make a new set of friends that you will never forget.
Rating:
Summary: advice to the poorly trained critics:
Review: Read the book out loud and you'll realize that every character has his/her own rhythm, technique, likely word choice, likely expressions, etc. A beautiful novel.
Rating:
Summary: Delightful feast for reading!
Review: I really liked this! It seemed quirky at first, but as I continued the interweaving of the stories are more real and lifelike than any other I've read. Baxter spins the tales of the seemingly unconnected people - and you find yourself traveling the threads and realizing the connectedness of everyone. The humour of love is barely concealed beneath the surface of what initially seems like a series of bad love mistakes. I enjoyed every word of this novel and while I would have wished for a 'happier' ending I was not disappointed in the least. The humans are real and fallible and even the dogs are amusing. Highly recommend this excellent story.
Rating:
Summary: A Feast for the Mind
Review: I really enjoyed this book by Charles Baxter. It is a thought provoking story and its words are able to unveil the truth and the essence of what real love is. The book is a series of stories told by varying characters who give us their greatest insight into love and its truest meaning. All of the people are brought vividly to life, each one being strong and unique in their own right. While each of the characters' knows how it feels to love, they also learn about the loss of love. Everyone has felt at some point like one of the characters in this book, we all know the sting of love found and love lost. I would definitely recommend this book. It's insight into human nature and the effects of love, all different types of love, on the spirit makes for a compelling read.
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