Customer Reviews

Shadow Play: A Novel

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Although I am much more partial to "The Feast of Love," "Shadowplay" is good in its own right. Feast of Love offers readers a glimpse into the interworkings of love and the betrayal of desire. On the other hand, Shadowplay weaves in and out of love, betrayal, enviornmental policy, civic responsibility, familial bonds and the like. It is a complex book full of complex characters who will intrigue the reader from page one until the last. Charles Baxter has a way with words--increasing and decreasing pace in the book which puts the reader deep into the throws of the book. He is the modern John Cheever.
Charles Baxter opens only slightly the issue of civic responsibility and enviornmental duty--resting the reader on the edge of the issue as if to call your attention to such problems without exactly giving you an answer. The main character wallows in these questions throughout the book and never fully resolves them himself giving you ample opportunity to devise an end to the story yourself.
All in all, I enjoyed the book immensely and have recommended it to several of my friends--thinking they will not only love his writing but might learn a little something as well.

Read this book. It's like listening to a really good jazz piece-- intense and light at the same time. It will knock your socks off. And if you ever get the chance to hear Baxter read any of his stuff live, he's a wonderful speaker and storyteller. One of my favorites.

I picked up this book based on the positive reviews I found here and because of the blurb on the dust cover claiming that the main character, Wyatt Palmer, struggles with a conscience divided between "personal love and social responsibility." I suppose I expected naively that his moral angst might very well fester and grow beneath his skin throughout the story, leading to some sort of crisis in which he must decide where his loyalties lie. Such a boil didn't appear.

In the end, juvenile, impotent rebellion appears...a kind of slow-motion tantrum after the point of moral crisis has passed. And so the main character is deflated by the author after pages and pages of insightful descriptions of people, places, and philosophies have been incorporated into the volume of the narrative. A lot of excellent work went into this book to end it so flaccidly.

The problem I have with the final third of the book is that it's just unconvincing. It's forced. There is something missing in the portrayal of Wyatt, I think, that would help me believe he'd react as he does. Despite all the other colorful characters populating the book, Wyatt is somehow impersonal, more like a pair of binoculars than a pair of eyes through which we see into his world of shadow play.

With that said, I wouldn't dissuade anyone from reading the book. Reading it is like going on a Sunday drive, scene after scene of elegant observations. But don't expect to end up anywhere other than where you began. Shadow Play works well as a study of some parts of middle-class America. But it needs more opportunities for empathy with its main character to work well as a story.

Not one of Mr. Baxter's best known books, but a big hit with our group.