Charles Baxter, Author . Pantheon $24 (317p) ISBN 978-0-375-41029-1
Despite its title, this searching, reflective novel is less concerned with couplehood than it is with the fretful inner life of one half of the eponymous married pair. Saul Bernstein, a literary descendant of Bellow's Herzog, is a transplanted...
READ FULL REVIEW
Charles Baxter, Author . Pantheon $20 (210p) ISBN 978-0-375-42252-2
The author of the National Book Award–nominated The Feast of Love
, Baxter returns with this ninth book, an assay into the limits of character, fictional and otherwise. The first half of the novel follows the brief arc of Nathaniel Mason's...
READ FULL REVIEW
Charles Baxter, Author Graywolf Press $12 (179p) ISBN 978-1-55597-473-2
Though there are passages where this slim, college-lecture-style volume turns facile or tiresome, novelist Baxter's analysis of ""the implied, the half-visible, and the unspoken"" in literature is saved from irrelevance by a keen sense of pacing and
READ FULL REVIEW
Charles Baxter, Author Paris Review $7.95 (101p) ISBN 978-0-945167-24-2
The poems in this debut collection evoke the artistry of Edward Hopper as fiction writer Baxter ( Through the Safety Net) plays with images of light, hopelessness and the loss of American innocence and creativity. The poet fashions a vista of...
READ FULL REVIEW
Charles Baxter, Author Penguin Books $14 (400p) ISBN 978-0-14-023510-4
Nine playful yet cumbersomely cerebral short stories explore the relationships between art and experience, intellect and passion, and discernable patterns between seemingly unrelated events. (Feb.)
READ FULL REVIEW
Charles Baxter, Author Pantheon Books $23 (288p) ISBN 978-0-679-44267-7
Baxter's (Shadow Play) sixth work of fiction is something of an incongruity: seven virtuosic stories preceding a novella largely bereft of the stories' shared merits. Ambitious and accomplished, the shorter works here tackle slippery themes and...
READ FULL REVIEW
Charles Baxter, Author Pantheon Books $24 (320p) ISBN 978-0-375-41019-2
Baxter (First Light, Harmony of the World, Believers) has for too long been a writer's writer whose books have enjoyed more admirers than sales. Pantheon appears confident that his new novel can be his breakout work. It certainly deserves to be. In...
READ FULL REVIEW
Charles Baxter, Author Viking Books $17.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-670-81701-6
Having published two books of short stories, Baxter does a masterful job of combining form with function in his first novel. The story begins with a Fourth of July celebration. Dorsey Welch and her husband, Simon, an actor, are spending the holiday...
READ FULL REVIEW
Charles Baxter, Author Penguin Books $15 (304p) ISBN 978-0-14-010091-4
``Baxter does a masterful job of combining form with function in his first novel,'' said PW of this story of an astrophysicist's awkward visit to the home of her car-salesman brother. ``This imaginatively conceived, evocative novel will hold the...
READ FULL REVIEW
Charles Baxter, Author W. W. Norton & Company $17.95 (223p) ISBN 978-0-393-02867-6
Most of the protagonists in these 13 wonderfully varied, often funny stories set by Baxter ( Harmony of the World ) in Michigan are complex men reaching for answers that elude them. On the other hand their women, anchored in a simple and peaceful...
READ FULL REVIEW
Charles Baxter, Author Graywolf Press $22.95 (245p) ISBN 978-1-55597-256-1
Taking arms against ""dysfunctional narratives"" and ""the mass production of insight, in fiction and elsewhere,"" novelist and short-story writer Baxter (First Light; Harmony of the World) hopes to restore literature and imagination to their...
READ FULL REVIEW
Charles Baxter. Pantheon, $24.95 (240p) ISBN 978-1-101-87001-3
Five stories named for virtues and five for vices make up this collection from a master craftsman. Set mostly in Minneapolis, Baxter’s (Gryphon) interlinked narratives feature ordinary people extending themselves beyond the ordinary for those they...
READ FULL REVIEW
Charles Baxter, Author, John Rubinstein, Performed by , read by John Rubinstein. Phoenix Audio $29.95 (0p) ISBN 978-1-597-77149-8
For the first quarter of this novel, even the talented John Rubinstein can't save it from sounding like Annie Hall Redux
. The clash between Midwest WASP and East Coast Jew is better captured by Woody Allen in a single line. However, this...
READ FULL REVIEW
Charles Baxter, Author, Jefferson Mays, Read by Recorded Books $29.99 (0p) ISBN 978-1-4281-7797-0
Baxter's novel is an unusual comic work about a grad student whose life gets progressively stranger and stranger as he finds himself attracted to two women and discovers a fellow student is swiping bits and pieces of his life. Jefferson Mays reads...
READ FULL REVIEW
Charles Baxter. Pantheon, $27.95 (336p) ISBN 978-1-5247-4885-2
Baxter’s first novel in over a decade (after The Soul Thief) juggles satirical social critique and family drama, resulting in a messy yet engrossing tale of activism and aging. Retired Minneapolis engineer Harry Brettigan spends his days searching...
READ FULL REVIEW
Charles Baxter. Graywolf, $17 trade paper (304p) ISBN 978-1-64445-091-8
Novelist Baxter (The Sun Collective) combines memoir with writing tips in this eclectic collection. In “The Request Moment, or ‘There’s Something I Want You to Do’,” he makes a case that inserting a request into a story can save ones that “sit there”
READ FULL REVIEW
Charles Baxter. Pantheon, $28 (224p) ISBN 978-0-593-70085-3
Baxter (The Sun Collective) pokes fun at religious do-gooders, conservatives, and the medical community in this entertaining if slight offering. Mild-mannered Brock Hobson, a divorced insurance salesman and Sunday school teacher, lives in rural Ohio
READ FULL REVIEW
ARTICLES
