Rating: 
Summary: Lovely
Review: I thought this was a fantastic book. It made me happy and it made me sad. I have read reviews here debating the finer points of the plot, the style, etc., but I have to agree with another reviewer who said that this book is just about people who are human and flawed. I just can't sum up the plot without making it sound trite or contrived. When I put it down I felt utterly satisfied, and yet if someone asked me what made it so great, I don't think I could describe it. One example of what I loved - one character is telling Charlie (who serves as the catalyst for the story in the beginning and ending sections that neatly bookend the real plot) that every relationship has a perfect moment. No matter what happens in the relationship, that moment will remain with both people involved. He goes on to tell a story of such an event with a woman he was involed with in the past - a moment that to him was so special, he never forgot it or the love he felt for that woman, even though they later broke up. Later, Charlie talks to this woman and finds that she has no recollection of this event. That seemed so utterly human and real to me. Suffice it to say that these are beautiful people and I loved reading about them.
Rating:
Summary: Perfectly Imperfect
Review: Perhaps a sign of good literature is the onslaught and avalanche of response it inspires. This Feast has surely inspired that. All widely varied. Whose is truth? Everyone's, surely. And a good piece of writing will do that to its reader: get the blood to boil, the brain cells to cook, the eye to look inward, the emotions to rise. As for my forlorn couple cents of opinion, here it is: It is the opening I like so well. To me, it spoke of the comfort of love; the very first page already invoking that quiet understanding between two souls in the night that so soothes. The husband, sleepless, wakes. The wife, still half asleep, touches his back in an accustomed motion. Even without fully waking, she knows his habits, she understands his needs, she is so well attuned to his ways, that he is in great part her now deeply imbedded instinct. In the sleepy dark, he recognizes her. He is recognized. In the night, in the dark, these two know each other, inside and out. What else is love? The book concludes in the same manner. The insomniac writer returns to his bed, having acquired all of his various love stories - the broken, the willful, the patched, the aged, the youthful, the crazed, the obsessed, the tragic, the divine - and again, the wife who knows him greets him into the warmed place where he belongs. Her hand once again rests on his back, and its touch soothes him, finally, into sleep. What a fitting enclosure to all that comes between. And what comes between is so well written, so artistically nearly perfect, that I was awestruck. This is my second Baxter book. The first that I read, "Believers," had me enchanted enough that I quickly plucked up this one. I gave that one 4 stars. I give this one 5. Yes, I could find a few tiny faults.... but perhaps that is what makes love, in this case the love of a book, so perfectly imperfect, so very human.
Rating:
Summary: Just Read It
Review: Several reviews here are fairly tough on this novel. Well, I don't have any New York Times Book Review insights to add. I loved this book. I was moved by this book. It was lovely and warm and funny and filled with truth. I identified a good deal with our noble hero Bradley. If you are in love, looking for love, or just lost it. Just read it. It is really simple. This book will lift you no matter what. Beautifully done.
Rating: 
Summary: Exasperating and Fatuous
Review: I have rarely encountered a book that annoyed me as quickly as The Feast of Love, and I do not recall ever putting a book down for good a mere 50 pages in so guiltlessly. The book -- what little I could bear to get through -- reads like a series of collegiate writing seminar exercises that need far more than workshopping to be salvaged. The effect is of a writer ticking off a list of quirky "features" in order to inject some life into a listless project: there's a dog that shares its owner's name, a character who tells the narrator to write a book (apparently the book we're reading), and I suspect there's more "creative" writing where that came from. I hesitate to comment on books I could not stand to get through, but thought that the chorus of praise cried out for at least one dissenting view. There is plenty of relatively reader-friendly stuff out there dealing with mature adult relationships in an interesting way -- Richard Ford comes immediately to mind -- and I'd strongly advise steering clear of this.
Rating:
Summary: Moonstruck
Review: Charlie, the insomniac, wanders through Ann Arbor in the moonlight. That's how it begins. There follow the interlocking stories of neighbors...acquaintances...ex-wives...star-struck kids...aging parents with a lost son...the guy who owns the local coffee shop. Humanity...human yearnings...human connections...so simple, so powerful. When I finished reading (just a day or so after I began), I just sat there for a few minutes with a goofy smile on my face. This is a lovely, lovely book! (And did I mention the writing? Gorgeous.)
Rating:
Summary: Just Terrible
Review: The writing is banal & the characters are barely one dimensional. The plot(such as it is...)is a poor attempt to modernize Shakespear. It's like a poorly pieced together puzzle (in that nothing seems to fit). The relationships between the characters seems forced. I paid $1.00 for this book & I was grossly overcharged.
Rating: 
Summary: Talk Soup
Review: Charles Baxter opens with an intriguing plot. It begins with two insomniacs who are neighbors, out in the wee hours of the morning, taking in the night air. They happen to meet unexpectantly in the local football stadium, each lost in their own thoughts and gazing down upon two young lovers going out for the long pass on the 50 yard line.
Passing the nights in conversation, one of the neighbors suggests to the other (who is a writer) to write a book about his love life. He offers to deliver true characters, ones that the writer himself could interview. He dares the writer to try him on for size, and even provides the name for the book, _The Feast of Love_. The writer initially balks, but takes the bait. And so, the feast is on. In each character's own words, a circle of lovers, friends and family come full round for an extremely entertaining novel. Some of the passages are hilarious and some quite poignantly bittersweet. Love is revealed in all it's glory and horror. Aside form some of these characters having impossibly vast vocabularies and similar speech patterns, the novel works. A quick read, it poses little difficulty except if you happen to lay the book down for too long and lose retention of the nuances of each person's unique story line and personality quirks. Better to re-read what you forgot than not completely savor all the flavors of love and the talk that goes on about it.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: This book is unlike any other I've read. Characters like Chloe and Oscar stay with you when the book is over. Baxter has written a novel that will make you cry and laugh...sometimes with only a few pages in between. This book is healing - as literature often can be. Few books I've read have intimacy between reader and characters - this one does.
Rating:
Summary: Playful ensemble piece w/ interesting character development.
Review: The book reminds me of a well done Robert Altman film. The story is background to the development of character in an ensemble environment. In the end, the sum is greater than the pieces. Essentially this is a series of intertwined short stories concerning the intersection of lives and love in a smallish town, the sort of place where even after on has loved and lost the former love is still part of the scene and a major intersect point in the carrying on of life. There are no "deep revelations" and the book never orients itself to judge the nature of love--seemingly a major failing if you read previous reviews. (I find it hard to condemn an effort for not accomplishing something it never set out to do, but whatever.) This is a deft and engaging effort that I think most folks-if they will only accept it for what it is and portends to be--highly engaging beach fare--will like enormously, as I did.
Rating: 
Summary: Should be called the "feast of sex'
Review: The book has an interesting structure and the writing is solid. However, many of the characters (especially the women) don't ring true. The story is very focused on the sex that transpires beteween the characters...which can be related to love but isn't the same thing. He doesn't flesh the relationships to what I'd describe as love, so the whole story struck me as shallow.
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