Believers: A novella and stories - Hardcover

Baxter, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679442677 ISBN 13: 9780679442677

Publisher: Pantheon, 1997

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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.

About the Author:

Charles Baxter lives in Minneapolis and teaches at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of seven other works of fiction, including Believers, Harmony of the World, and Through the Safety Net. The Feast of Love was a finalist for the National Book Award.
From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0679442677
• ISBN 13: 9780679442677
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272