The Feast of Love: A Novel by Charles Baxter

Title

The Feast of Love: A Novel

Author

Charles Baxter

Copyright

2000

Ah, now this is one of those really beautiful books that I love. This is a book about love, in all its forms: beautiful, painful, perfect, doomed and the way that the lives of the characters in this book are shaped by it. As a writer, I admire Baxter's mastery of the voices in this text, each voice is clear, distinct, the personalities of the characters he creates honest and unique. This was a book that nearly had me in tears several times.

The premise of this book is decievingly simple. Charlie, our original narrator is an insomniac and he often goes for walks when he has difficulty sleeping. On one of these walks, he encounters his friend and one of the main characters in the book, Bradley. Bradley says that he should collect stories about love, so that's what Charlie does. First we have the story of Bradley's failed marriage to Kathryn and then we hear Kathryn's side of the story and how she was busy falling in love with another woman. His second wife Diana marries him while in love with another man and eventually leaves him for that man. We encounter Chloe (pronounced clow-AY, not CLOW-ee as you would expect) and her delirious and beautiful romance with recovering drug-addict Oscar. We meet Ethel and Harry an elderly Jewish couple who are at a loss at how to save their prodigal son. These voices weave together elegantly, and despite the sadness of many of the stories, the novel leaves you feeling satisfied, if a bit lonely. If you don't believe in love, I think the book could make a believer out of you.

The biggest theme in this book is obviously love, but it is all the different stages meanings and directions of love. Falling in love, falling out of love, being in love for fifty years, losing the one you love most, and finding the one you're meant to be with. It is sentimental and sweet, but honest. The characters are often flawed and desperate, but Baxter loves his creations and it comes through in this book.

Go buy the book, read the book, love the book. I haven't seen the movie yet, but just reading how they changed the characters around, I'm pushing the book first.

By the Shore by Galaxy Craze

Title

By the Shore

Author

Galaxy Craze

Copyright

1999

So, its safe to say that I haven't posted anything up here recently and that's for a very good reason. With all the reading I had been doing to finish up college, I didn't have time to read for myself. I'm sorry about that, but research papers took over my life for a brief period of time.

Anyway, so here's a neat book by a newer author (is 9 years ago new?) and it is her first book. It is a story about a young girl named May who is dealing with that troubled time between child and teenager. She lives with her mother and little brother Eden in a somewhat unsuccessful bed and breakfast by the shore in England. The story takes place (according to the back cover) in the sixties, but really the themes and troubles in it transcend any real time place. I would argue that the story could take place anywhere from 1960 to 1980 without there being any real problems. It is a story that has a feeling of removal from the rest of the world. It is written with simple vocabulary that make sense coming from our young narrator. The complexity is clear on the page, though.

When a new boarder named Rufus (an American writer) comes to stay at the bed and breakfast, it becomes clear that there is a romance between he and May's mother developing. This story deals with a lot of themes that I'm fond of reading about. Most notable would be the parent/child relationship since May's mother is a terrible failure as a parent. A great theme in this book is women and how they look at each other. There are very few male characters in this story, the only notable ones being Rufus and Eden. Eden is a child and and Rufus is often quiet and withdrawn from the other characters making this clearly a story about the female characters. This books asks, what is it to be a woman, and what kind of woman should May become?

Read this story, you won't regret it.

Good Omens by Terri Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Title
Good Omens

Author
Terry Pratchett
Neil Gaiman

Copyright
1990



This is another book for the weird and wild mind of Sayshana. I read it, I liked it, although was vaguely aware that reading it just might be sacriligious, and for some bizarre reason that vaguely bothered me. So here's the premise of the book, an angel and a demon have been living in the same area for so long that they've more or less become friends. They do drink together regularly, though, and have typical "we're drunk, yet philosophical" discussions that pretty much everyone has on a good friday night.

Our friendly little demon (named Crowley, haha writers so clever), has been given the job of delivering the AntiChrist to an evil nunnery where it is quickly switched with a regular baby and is switched with a wealthy Brittish family, or so they think. Azizraphale (i'm not sure on the spelling, but he's the angel) and Crowley make a little deal, they're both going to try and influence baby Warlock's growth and see what happens.

When little Warlock turns twelve and doesn't have any evil powers of mass destruction and mayhem, it becomes apparent that there might have been a mistake. As the time of the Apocalypse grows nearer, our heroes desperately try to locate the real AntiChrist and to prevent the end of everything.

In this story we are presented with a horde of interesting characters. They are all so bizarre and odd that on some level they seem to compete for your attention on the page. Perhaps what I found most pleasurable about reading this book was the descriptions and hyper-active descriptions that the authors use. An example of this would be the passage "gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide". Just brilliant and just brilliantly weird.

I reccommend reading it, but I personally didn't find it a fast read. It took me a week to get through it, mainly because the mass of characters are introduced all at roughly the same time and it does take a while to figure out who is who and what their relevance to the story is. Take your time reading it so you don't get lost, and remember, its supposed to be weird and funny!

Flight by Sherman Alexie

Title
Flight

Author
Sherman Alexie

Copyright
2007





This book is one of the best I've read in a long time. It is a story about violence, about the cycle of violence and abuse that has punctuated our American history and how we perpetuate violence through our actions. Sixteen-year-old Zits is a ward of the state. His mother died when he was six and he hasn't ever met his Indian father. As a result, he's just another kid in the foster care system being bumped from home to home.

When Zits meets Justice, a white kid that seems to have all the answers, he starts down a dark path that leads him to commit a terrible crime that results in his own death. However, this is not the end of the book. In fact, this all happens in the first fifth of the book, the real story begins when Zits finds himself on a strange vision quest, through which he experiences a series of lives all marked by violence in one form or another.

At first, Zits doesn't understand what he is seeing, but as the story progresses, he learns from each inhabitation. Don't get the wrong image here, these aren't sappy-sweet lessons, they are bitter and harsh and somewhat devastating. He learns that even muderers have something they care about, he learns that heroes are not always heroes, he learns that people tell themselves they're doing the right thing even when they know they're not. Character after character is presented to us as Zits lives through their lives. Sometimes redemption is possible for these people, but more often, not.

The themes of this book include, violence, the cycle of violence, personal identity, racial identity, foster care, abuse, and redemption. The only problem I have with this book is the ending. The ending doesn't fit for me, but truthfully, I'm glad he wrote it that way. What happens in the end? I'm not telling. Read it and find out!