Rating: 
Summary: A Literary Feast
Review: This is a wonderful book with very lively and colourful characters. Baxter evokes every type of emotion in the reader, very much like the characters who experience the pains and joys of love. Some parts are very humourous while others can be very serious and heartbreaking. I have never read a fiction novel written in this form before where the author is in the novel interviewing the characters. I think Baxter allows the reader to dive into this fairy tale like story while also being very realistic. You will wonder while you are reading whether or not these characters really exist or not. As a Michigander, and now a resident of Ann Arbor where the story takes place, I thought this story was believable and it felt more real to me. Many of the places and streets in the novel exist. It's refreshing to finally see a midwestern tale that is as exciting and lively as The Feast of Love
Rating: 
Summary: Makes you feel "starspattered"
Review: Before I read the above reviews I knew luminous was a key descriptive word. I was afraid that the book would read choppily because of all the characters' points of view but the uniting force in this novel is radiant love. We never even see the writer, Charles Baxter, who several times walks past a mirror that no longer refelcts. He is the medium that channels these wonderful people. There is parental love, erotic love, love of knowledge and divine love. All of it shines as brightly as the painting described in the book (and later seen at the wedding). It is a Midsummer's Night Dream told by an insomniac who feels "emptied out" by the end of the book. It has the abililty of expressing profound truths in simple ways. "I had smashed my life with a hammer" one character states, but later through redemptive love he also is able to say "Whatever I was that was apparently what she wanted." It is a celebration of love and being human. I loved this book.
Rating:
Summary: A modern Symposium...
Review: I see this book compared to Plato's Symposium in the critical blurbs. That's fair enough - Baxter references it himself in the book. I admire any writer who can write about philosophy so effortlessly while not being boring. As soon as one of the characters claimed to be obsessed with Kierkegaard, I was hooked.Yes, this book is a feast of love. It is about romantic love in all its aspects - young and not so young. The most adorable couple in the book are the teenagers Oscar and Chloe (pronounced "Klow-Ay"). They are just punks who spend most of their time having sex, but their dreams are surprisingly traditional. Don't be scared off if you think that a book about love is going to be sappy - it isn't. Baxter breathes life into all of his diverse characters. We come to feel for them - their dreams, their fears, and their frustrations. When tragedy finally strikes, we are so involved we become heartbroken too. Baxter writes in an interview style, effectively giving us multiple first-person narrators. The conversational writing quickly hooks the reader and moves him briskly along. It is like an Altman film - there is no central character, just an interesting journey into the lives and loves of these Midwestern people. A very good read.
Rating:
Summary: The Feast of Love
Review: This was a truly amazing book! Charles Baxter did an amazing job of showing how deep down everyone just wants to be loved. Bradley, one of the main characters, wants to love and to be loved so badly that he will give up anything for it. Chloe, a worker in Bradley's coffee shop, and her boyfriend, Oscar, are the only ones who actually find true love. Although they are the youngest characters in the novel, they are the wisest when it comes to love. Diana, Bradley's first wife, wants an exciting lover more than she wants to find her soulmate. Kathryn, Bradley's second wife, finds the love she needs in another woman. Harry Ginsberg, Bradley's next-door neighbor, has a lot of love for his son, Aaron, who has run away and won't return. Bradley the dog, Bradley the human's dog, also needs love from his owner. So basically, everyone spends their lives looking for love. And everyone needs love. Also, everyone needs to read this book!
Rating:
Summary: Don't be scared off by the title or the cover!
Review: This book is amazing and a 2004 must read for both guys and gals! If you enjoyed movies like Short Cuts or 6 Degree's of Separation you will love this book and understand how it's laid out (i.e. separate characters - living separate lives - somehow connected). This book proved to me that ANY unique thought, personality trait, quirk/tick, phrase/snappy word selection, word choice, vision, day dream, fear, insecurity, issue, event, etc. that I thought was truly unique to ME and made me different from everyone else is/was a big farce. Charles Baxter was able to provide me with a 'grow up' wake up call - prove to me that there is nothing original nor unique about me or how I think or what I say or how I act, etc. My entire 'supposedly unique character/self' is smeared across every character (male and female) in this book. All men over the age of 30 should be required to read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Intimate slice-of-life in everyday setting
Review: This is a nice book, with a variety of brooding characters who are involved in different love affairs. I enjoyed the dreamy quality of the prose and how all the characters lives, although mundane, were described in a poetic way, as if trascending their own existence. In summary, I found this book a pleasant and high-quality quick read. Recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Flawless!
Review: Wonderful characters; wonderful dialogue; wonderful humor; wonderful everything. I want to make sure I get my 5 stars in. I just read Anne Tyler's Amateur Marriage, and this is much more enjoyable, actually like some of Tyler's best books.
Rating:
Summary: Well worth your time, money--GREAT discussion for book clubs
Review: This was one of our picks for book club and it generated terrific discussion. The entire title/theme centers around a painting one of the characters did. Original plot, premise, and treatment. Well written, finely drawn characters, deftly made connections, just a really great book. Don't hesitate here. Read it; share it with a friend though... Because you will want to discuss this with someone.
Rating:
Summary: Love - both mistaken and real
Review: Charles Baxter, an acclaimed master of the short story, proves himself equally adept as a novelist in The Feast of Love. The writer "Charlie" scrambles out of bed late at night because of a recurrent nightmare and decides to take a walk. A few blocks from his house, he encounters Bradley, an acquaintance and fellow insomniac who is walking his dog (also named Bradley.) There, in the middle of the night in Ann Arbor, Bradley the human dictates the title and characters of the novel Charlie should be writing. What follows then is pure structural brilliance: Charlie, as an invisible interviewer, pursues the "real" people who have touched Bradley's life: ex-wives Kathryn and Diana, young employees Chloé and Oscar, neighbors Harry and Esther - and the people who affect them. Each character tells a part of the story in his or her own voice. Soon, Charlie the interviewer fades into the background, emerging only when details that he has revealed at the beginning appear in the lives of his characters and thus remind the reader that, in true metafiction style, this fiction has a creator. These love stories tell of mistaken love and true love - and the heartbreak that comes with both. Although they begin as separate tales, by the end they converge, bringing the novel together in a heartwarming whole. Baxter's prose is, as always, precisely clear. The distinct voices of the narration are superbly handled, especially in the case of Chloé, who is the most memorable character in the novel. Charles Baxter fans should not pass up this extraordinary novel. If you like the metafiction in Ian McEwan's Atonement or the quirkiness of Anne Tyler's characters, you should appreciate this novel.
Rating:
Summary: a hidden gem
Review: It is a terrible injustice that this book seems to have been largely ignored by critics and readers, enjoying a modest success when it should be hailed a contemporary classic. Baxter tells an ordinary tale with such love and respect for his characters that you feel humbled and moved by its contents. There is nothing spectacular about this book and that is the whole point. In the same way as a writer like Anne Tyler can create magic from seemingly ordinary situations, Baxter draws you in to a deceptively simple scenario and steals your heart. A wonder.
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