n these eight stories, Charles Baxter displays once again "the ability to orchestrate the details of day-to-day reality into surprising patterns of revelation and the knack for describing the fleeting moments that indelibly define a life" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times). Believers powerfully reaffirms Baxter's standing as a true contemporary master of the short story.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
What a marvelous writer Charles Baxter is. His prose is luminous, his imagery surprising, and the stories he tells are bottomless in their depth. Readers who have not already had the good fortune to make this writer's acquaintance in earlier works of fiction such as Shadow Play, Harmony of the World, and others have a rare treat in store for them in his latest collection of short stories, Believers. Here, in "The Cures for Love," Ovid returns from the dead to offer advice to a young woman whose lover has left her, while in "Kiss Away" an urban genie grants another young woman a wish for her boyfriend's love--a wish that proves double- edged. The collection's title novella, "Believers," is a son's account of his father, a former priest who "was vacated of his faith" when he met the woman he would one day marry.
As this novella and the eponymous collection suggest, faith is at the crux of all these stories--lost faith, lack of faith, transient faith. Belief in God or in one's lover or in oneself, whatever shape it assumes, is the essential quality Baxter's characters seek, and sometimes find. These stories demand more than one reading, and they will, with each revisiting, yield some new and telling insight that makes you wonder that you never noticed it before.
From Kirkus Reviews
No one will ever accuse Baxter of literary frivolity--and that's the problem. In these eight stories, even the most casual events come bathed in sociopolitical gloss, often to the detriment of Baxter's modest narrative instincts. ``Believers,'' the novella that takes up a large part of this volume, strives for world-historical significance to explain one man's loss of faith: the narrator's father, a former Catholic priest who was seduced from his bumpkin modesty in the Midwest by a couple of northeastern smarties, a Protestant husband and wife who aspired to be America's answer to the Cliveden set--witty and urbane fascists, with oodles of dough and a fancy estate in Michigan. The narrator's frustration is simple: He was conceived as a direct result of apostasy and abandoned celibacy. Such clear and easy ironies abound in Baxter's remaining stories as well. In ``The Next Building I Plan to Bomb,'' a seemingly bland (and heterosexual) midwestern banker finds a threatening message on a piece of paper and decides to act out his own need to be dangerous by engaging in unsafe sex with a young man. Baxter's well-written narratives are distinguished by such surprises--the odd revelation in an apparently ordinary life, like the neighbor who may or may not be a child molester/killer (``Time Exposure''); the happily-in- love young slacker who isn't sure whether her boyfriend is a woman beater or not (``Kiss Away''); and the married father who acts like a fool over his first wife, whom he hasn't seen since she left him over a decade ago (``Flood Show''). Linked by their underlying concern with the forms of passion, these stories are best exemplified by ``The Cures For Love,'' a relatively modest tale of a classics teacher who finds solace in Ovid. Baxter's banal commentary about America as mouthed by his characters is slightly more endurable than those same characters' tendency to write things like ``sadness'' on grocery lists. A fine writer is here tried (tired?) and true. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best of Baxter,
By tlemire@cnc.com (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Believers: A Novella and Stories (Paperback)
Until a long-awaited follow-up proves me wrong, "Believers" is Charles Baxter's finest collection of short fiction. Many writers choose similar themes as Baxter -- midwestern life, midlife romance, middle-distance observation -- but none, in my reading, handle the short fiction form with such aplomb and dexterity, making it look easy. The novella in this collection that gives it its name is outstanding, insofar as it grapples with such enormous themes of trust, belief and the mystery of people in the number of pages it does. Until we get another novel or short fiction collection from C. Baxter, there is the rereading of these stories, a thoroughly enjoyable and edifying experience.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Delightful and profoundly moving,,
By A Customer
This review is from: Believers: A Novella and Stories (Paperback)
the stories in this book are meant to be savored. Every character and event is deeply engaging and somehow exactly right. There's something on every page which will surprise or amaze you and make you have an uncanny feeling that the author is voicing your next thought. Chances are you will recognize a bit of yourself or someone you know in each of his characters. Reading "Believers" or any of Charles Baxter's books is a true pleasure; once discovered, they are sure to be among your favorites.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An American Master Outdoes Himself,
By A Customer
This review is from: Believers: A novella and stories (Hardcover)
What makes Charles Baxter's stories beautiful, beyond the understated brilliance of the words he finds to tell them, is the deep respect and sympathy he obviously feels for his characters. Reading, you enter the minds of the most random people--a small-town English teacher, a middle-aged housewife with growing doubts about her husband's secrets, a man who owes his life to the failure of his father, a priest, to keep his vow of chastity. Each character is revealed in all his or her complexity and humanity, with absolute fidelity: there is no patronizing moral judgment or reducing people to "types," just an understanding sadness at people's failings and a quiet admiration where admiration is due. One of the most unexpected and satisfying things about his writing is how funny his stories can be--they've made me laugh out loud, but even Baxter's highly developed sense of the absurd never overwhelms the underlying feeling of a story. I love Charles Baxter's writing, and for me, Believers is the best he's done so far.
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