Charles Baxter

Saul and Patsy
$13.95
There is wonderful writing in SAUL AND PATSY. Here, for example, are two quick observations about Saul, which spill from Baxter with continuous and apparently effortless grace.

"Cloud, mud, wind. Joy and woe, mad happiness and rue lived side by side in Saul with very few emotions in between. Even his gloom was thick with lyric intensity, like a brass band playing a funeral march all day and having a good time doing it."

"His typical despairs were beginning to look like luxuries to him. He could be a despair junkie and a virtuoso of fretfulness but probably not anymore, not with a daughter around. Somehow he would have to discard his friends, the long-term discontents, those houses of metaphysical yearnings where he had once made his home."

Such elegance and texture is ubiquitous in SAUL AND PATSY, making this book a pleasure to read and a fully involving journey of discovery, with Baxter finding new depth, complexity, and, usually, decency in all his characters, right up to the novel's end. The book, by the way, is about a young, loving, middle class couple in Michigan, surrounded by crazy people who are either isolated, delusional, or immature and violent.

At the same time, I would say that SAUL AND PATSY is more true to life than it is a literary machine. You see, early in this novel, Baxter presents his characters and their relationships as subtle variations on each other. To name just two, the perfect and successful Howie is the antithesis of the weird Gordie; and Delia, a mother and affluent widow, contrasts with Brenda, an ugly waitress and single parent. But as the story evolves, Baxter drops such facile positioning and lets a humane messiness evolve in his story and enter his characters. Not everyone will agree. But this reader actually admired Baxter for his choices, with him capturing the messy connections of life in this novel, not just the symmetry of literary fiction.

A final thought: In SAUL AND PATSY, Baxter gives Michael Chabon a run for the money and shows that he might be the metaphor champion of the Baby Boomers.

Shadow Play: A Novel
$14.00
There are several layers in this story of life in Five Oaks, Michigan, a town where social responsibility and love seem to crash into each other. This is a gorgeous book, a wonderful story beautifully written with an unclouded moral that rings true.

Believers: A Novella and Stories
$13.00
"Believers" is Charlie Baxter at the top of his game: totally unassuming grace and a compassion for his characters that makes reading these stories a fulfulling experience.

The first story in this collection, "Kiss Away", is up there with Joyce Carol Oates's "Where are You Going, Where Have you Been?" and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" on my list of the all-time most haunting short stories which leave the reader feeling vaguely terrified.

The Soul Thief (Vintage Contemporaries)
$13.95
I appreciated this novel as an intellectual exercise on the nature of identity and writing, but beyond that, it neither chilled me nor frightened me (as so many of the reviews assured me it would). What little suspense there is in the novel doesn't amount to much, and I never once bought into the Nathaniel character's extreme reaction (sweating, trembling, shaking) to what his nemisis was doing to him. I mean, some annoying guy you meet at a party steals your shirts, a girl you don't really care that much about, and some stories from your life, and you have a nervous breakdown over it? In fact, I would hardly call Coolberg a nemesis; he was simply more of a pest. He COULD have been truly threatening, terrifying, and the scenes between the two of them nail-biting and gripping - but alas, this well-written novel didn't live up to its promise for suspense. When the two characters finally "have it out," I was expecting fireworks. What I got was a wet firecracker.