Лучшие книги Чарльза Бакстера

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.

In this book, Baxter offers several sharp, articulate, and provocative essays that examine the many forces currently shaping contemporary American fiction. As noted in The Washington Times: "What elevates this collection from the status of technical manual (which it also is, and a brilliant one at that) is Mr. Baxter's rare ability to gauge the capacities of fiction for conveying an image not only of individual existence, but of the characteristic feel of a time, a culture, a way of life."
Charles Baxter is also the author of the novels First Light and Shadow Play, the story collections Harmony of the World, Through the Safety Net, A Relative Stranger, and Believers, and Imaginary Paintings, a book of poetry. He was recently honored with an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and currently teaches at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
In this book, Baxter offers several sharp, articulate, and provocative essays that examine the many forces currently shaping contemporary American fiction. As noted in The Washington Times: "What elevates this collection from the status of technical manual (which it also is, and a brilliant one at that) is Mr. Baxter's rare ability to gauge the capacities of fiction for conveying an image not only of individual existence, but of the characteristic feel of a time, a culture, a way of life."

From the winner of the PEN/Malamud Award and “one of our most gifted writers” (Chicago Tribune) comes a comic novel about a divorced Midwestern dad who takes a cutting-edge medical test and learns that he has a predisposition to murder.

In this fresh take on love and trouble in America, Brock Hobson, an insurance salesman and Sunday-school teacher, finds his equilibrium disturbed by the results of a predictive blood test. Baxter, a master storyteller, brings us a gradually building rollercoaster narrative, and a protagonist who is impertinent, searching, and hilariously relatable. From his good-as-gold, gentle girlfriend to the excessively macho subcontractor guy his ex-wife left him for, not to mention his well-raised teenage kids, now exploring sex and sexuality, the secondary characters in Brock's life all contribute meaningfully to the drama, as increasing challenges to his sense of self and purpose crash over him. The final battle—no spoilers, but there is one—couldn't be more delightful, as this quick and bracing novel reminds us to choose the best people to love, accept the ones we love even if we didn’t choose them, and love them all well.

From one of the great masters of the contemporary short story, here is an astonishing collection that showcases Charles Baxter’s unique ability to unveil the remarkable in the seemingly inconsequential moments of an eerie yet familiar life. Penetrating and prophetic, the ten inter-related stories in "There’s Something I Want You to Do" are held together by a surreally intricate web of cause and effect—one that slowly ensnares both fictional bystanders and enraptured readers. Benny, an architect and hopeless romantic, is robbed on his daily walk along the Mississippi River, and the blow of a baseball bat to the back of his knee feels…

Hugh Welch has cared for his little sister Dorsey ever since they were children, when Dorsey looked at him as though he were a god. But when Dorsey returns to their small Michigan hometown with a successful career as an astrophysicist and a happy family life, Hugh, who has a long habit of worrying about his sister, realizes that it’s his own life he has to cure, not Dorsey’s. As they explore their complicated history over one hot Fourth of July weekend, they’ll come to terms with the experiences that put such distance between them and discover the imperfect love that ties them as siblings.

Without question Charles Baxter, whose ravishing novel The Feast of Love was a National Book Award finalist, is one of our finest contemporary writers. These two books, set in the Michigan landscape that Baxter has made his own, display his unparalleled gift for revealing the unexpected in everyday life. The often-curious connections of relatives and strangers are illuminated in the thirteen exquisite stories of A Relative Stranger. "You can't just get a brother off the street," a character says, but indeed he does.

Without question Charles Baxter, whose ravishing novel The Feast of Love was a National Book Award finalist, is one of our finest contemporary writers. These two books, set in the Michigan landscape that Baxter has made his own, display his unparalleled gift for revealing the unexpected in everyday life. In the novel Shadow Play, a decent man, having made a "devil's bargain," finds himself on that precarious border between personal love and social responsibility. Reading group guide included.

From the winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence and "one of our most gifted writers" (Chicago Tribune), Saul and Patsy is stunning, never predictable, glimmering fiction, full of mischief and insight (The Los Angeles Times).

Five Oaks, Michigan is not exactly where Saul and Patsy meant to end up. Both from the East Coast, they met in college, fell in love, and settled down to married life in the Midwest. Saul is Jewish and a compulsively inventive worrier; Patsy is gentile and cheerfully pragmatic. On Saul's initiative (and to his continual dismay) they have moved to this small town-a place so devoid of irony as to be virtually "a museum of earlier American feelings"-where he has taken a job teaching high school.

Soon this brainy and guiltily happy couple will find children have become a part of their lives, first their own baby daughter and then an unloved, unlovable boy named Gordy Himmelman. It is Gordy who will throw Saul and Patsy's lives into disarray with an inscrutable act of violence. As timely as a news flash yet informed by an immemorial understanding of human character, Saul and Patsy is a genuine miracle.