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 Novel offers 'Feast' of insight A Review By Hannah Pittard "The Feast of Love" begins when its author, Charles Baxter, awakens "with fright" from a dream. His fright and consequent inability to sleep take him on a 4 a.m. walk through downtown Ann Arbor, Mich., and into the college stadium, where he spies two young lovers on the 50-yard line. Although the lovers remain anonymous, their presence quickly establishes the novel as a story of love - lost love, recovered love, sick love, physical love, one-sided love and tough love. Leaving the bleachers, Baxter notices one of his neighbors sitting on a bench with his dog. This neighbor, Bradley Smith, with his dog, also named Bradley, offers to become the center of Baxter's story. He even offers Baxter a title for his next book, "The Feast of Love." Reluctantly, Baxter accepts. On that first night, under the banner of a dark and anonymous sky, Smith, twice divorced, tells Baxter the story of his first wife, Kathryn, who eventually left him for another woman. At the end of the story, Smith goes so far as to suggest that Baxter contact his first ex-wife for her side of the story. From here, Baxter - in search of a story and also of sleep - gives up his own first-person narratives for those of his neighbor and his neighbor's lovers and friends. Baxter becomes all but absent - a vehicle for a simultaneously eager and reluctant community of strangers and friends to tell their own everyday romantic misfortunes and fortunes. At times, "The Feast of Love" seems simple, even common. Baxter's first-person narratives are more successful - or at least more convincing - when the character is a man. His portrayal of women and teenagers often rings false. But even in his arguably unsuccessful attempt to capture the female voice and also the voice of a younger generation, there is a small victory - something endearing, if not quite right, in the fact that he has made the effort at all. In one of the book's more painful moments, Smith, described as a man who has offered love several times without any takers, writes about the night he fell in love with his second ex-wife, long after they had divorced: "Bradley tugged at the leash, but I was not to be moved. And I saw Diana clearly, leaning into this fellow, her head bent to the left so that it was resting on his shoulder, and this insane eventuality happened. I felt this punch in my stomach. Standing there, across the street, in the shadows where it was possibly my fate to live, forever after, I felt this punch in my stomach … Sick with memory, I was in love with Diana, genuinely, still, or maybe for the first time, at least this way. They got in the car and now she put her hand on his chest and started kissing him. They kissed for a while. I should have turned away. I tried … It occurred to me for the first time that I had smashed my life with a hammer." By the end, it becomes clear why the "The Feast of Love" was a National Book Award Finalist. Baxter, author also of "Harmony of the World" and "Through the Safety Net," taps with honest, straightforward narratives into the powerful heartbeat of a small town. |
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