Shadow Play: A Novel [Hardcover]

Charles Baxter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1993

Baxter's haunting First Light and his award-winning stories demonstrated his unparalleled gift for revealing the unexpected in the ordinary. His astonishing new novel focuses on the precarious intersection where personal love and social responsibility collide, as played out in the midwestern town of Five Oaks.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Nine playful yet cumbersomely cerebral short stories explore the relationships between art and experience, intellect and passion, and discernable patterns between seemingly unrelated events.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this tale of normalcy mixed with eccentricity and lunacy, Wyatt Palmer's father spends his weekends in the family basement, building incomprehensible model houses and filling a drawer with philosophical notes. After he dies, Wyatt's mother goes off the deep end, making up words and talking to herself. Wyatt is eventually raised by his Aunt Ellen, who is writing a new bible. Although Wyatt has artistic talent, after college he marries and cultivates a super-normal life in his Midwestern hometown, working as an assistant city manager. The outside world invades Wyatt's "normal" life when a schoolmate builds a factory that emits toxic fumes inside its own building, which brings about the death of Wyatt's jailbird cousin, Cyril. In the aftermath, Wyatt flees to New York City, where his mother feels at home. Baxter is at his best in his short stories (e.g., A Relative Stranger , LJ 8/87); here, he leaves the reader with less than satisfying resolutions. But his odd characters, set in familiar American landscapes and rendered in a fine, controlled style, remain vivid. Recommended for public libraries.
- Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib., New York
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 399 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc; First Edition edition (January 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393034372
• ISBN-13: 978-0393034370
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,277,734 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent--Read Charles Baxter!, March 17, 2000

By 

Jessica (Seattle) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shadow Play: A Novel (Paperback)

I just don't know what to say about this book. The plot, writing style, and main tropes behind the novel are just so unique from anything else I've read that I really can't critique the book, because I can't compare it to other novels.

The only authors I can compare Baxter to are Milan Kundera and Jonathan Carrol, and even then only lightly. The book, "Shadow Play", is a superbly written, idiosyncratic little masterpiece with ordinary characters that really aren't ordinary at all. The book jumps from character to character and from past to presnet with alarming suddenness, but that's not a fault. The prose sings. The moral questions are interesting and serious. The main characters are wonderful and real.

Altogether, a perfectly written book that so thoroughly inhabits its own world that to grade it in terms of good or bad literature is just about impossible, for me, at least. Highest recommendation.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another positve review...., December 19, 2000

By 

John Kosh Jr. (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shadow Play: A Novel (Paperback)

Baxter, known for his various short stories, brings all his literary talents to this novel, Shadow Play. I'll let the other readers' comments cover the basic plot and storyline, which is superb, but I do want to pass this bit of information.

I came away from this novel feeling as if I had just found a modern-day Catcher in the Rye with an adult Holden Caulfield. The writing is so vivid and accurate that I found myself empathizing with many of the characters' thoughts and situations. What "Catcher" was to me at 16, Shadow Play is to me at 29. A very adult examination of an ordinary life in an ordinary town, written in a very unordinary fashion.

A beautiful book for anyone who enjoys a well written yarn.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An ordinary life?, October 4, 2000

By 

Jim Jessup - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shadow Play: A Novel (Paperback)

This novel has enough guts, great writing and plot to fill three books. Relationships with family members, becoming an adult and tough decisions that come with it, love, insanity, suicide and redemption are all addressed. The amazing thing about this novel is it looks at all of these things, and never looses focus. The story circles around Wyatt, his looser brother, his wife who can do magic tricks and his insane mother. Also, He has an aunt who is writing he own bible. Baxter does a great job of interaction between characters, particularly in the dialogue. Mr. Baxter is more known for his short stories, but after getting reading this I can't help but hope he turns out more novels before he is done. This is that book you have to put is someone else's hand when you finish it, because you sometimes forget how much 300 pages can offer you.