The Feast of Love

Charles Baxter

May 2009 · Sold by Vintage

About this ebook

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 Post

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.

Ratings and reviews

I realized--a little too late--that the best way to write a review for a book is not to watch the movie before writing the review. I’m going to try my best not to compare the movie to the book in this, because this isn’t a comparison/contrast. This is my opinion and analysis on the book alone. It’s hard to decide who the central character of the book is. In most conventional stories, the narrator would be seen as the protagonist. But Feast of Love is not a conventional story. While the narrator of the story is Baxter himself, I inferred the protagonist to be Bradley Smith. Every story does not necessarily revolve around Bradley but is connected to him somehow. Feast of Love seem particularly appropriate especially in a time when the American culture seems to have fallen in love with the idea of falling in love. This being said, while the idea of falling in love is so appealing, the culture is completely unaware of what to do once already in love. Because, as seasoned veterans of this particular state of being will tell any novice, love is a verb, not a feeling. It requires hard work from both parties or it will undoubtedly fail. Baxter uses this idea when he creates the intertwining stories of Chloé and Oscar, Harry and Esther, Bradley and Kathryn, Kathryn and Jenny, Bradley and Diana, Diana and David, and finally, Bradley and Margaret. Chloé and Oscar are the typical high-school-sweetheart-with-a-twist story. it is a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, complete with a less-than-ideal father that does not approve of his son’s choice in women, and the untimely--though foreseen--death of one of the lovers. They were the story that kept the book driving for me, I always wanted to see what would happen next with them. They had each other, and that’s all they needed. A very popular philosophy among romantics in the culture. We want to feel like all we need is the heart of someone else and their presence standing beside us as we brave the harsh realities of the world. Bradley is searching for the woman. He is a hopeless romantic that falls head-over-heels in love with every woman he looks at and once he’s fallen it’s very difficult for him to get back up. Relationship #1: Kathryn. They split because Kathryn had fallen in love with Jenny, a woman on her softball team. But their troubles began even before they married. She tells Baxter in Chapter Three: “I kept reaching for his heart and finding nothing there to hold on to. ... The worst mistakes I’ve made have been the ones directed by good-natured hopefulness” (31). Relationship #2: Diana. They divorced not even a month after their wedding. Bradley doesn’t go into details, but it was no secret that through their story that she had a much stronger personality than him. This is not helped that for the majority of their relationship and nearly all of their marriage she was in love with David, the married man she had been sleeping with prior to and during her time with Bradley. And, last but not least, Relationship #3: Margaret. Their meet-cute makes the reader smile a bit, and at the end of the story the reader is left with hope that this one will actually work out. Bradley is the character embodiment of the American culture. He wants to be in love with the woman that will “make the world’s soul possible ... make the world and keep it running” (173). For Bradley, love is a state of being that exists completely outside of the realm of humanity. It pulls us in and spins us around. If we survive the hurricane, we survive the love. If not, we’re tossed out. There is no action on our part to keep love going. All we’re supposed to do is legalize the marriage and make the love. All else is a matter of fate. Harry and Esther Ginsberg are the couple that exhibit the true nature of love. They’ve been together for years, and they pull their strength from each other to get through the day. Their life is not storybook-perfect. Their youngest son would rather them dead and only calls them to yell at them for

About the author

Charles Baxter lives in Minneapolis and teaches at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of seven other works of fiction, including Believers, Harmony of the World, and Through the Safety Net. The Feast of Love was a finalist for the National Book Award.