The Feast of Love

Charles Baxter

Beautifully poetic and compulsive once it gets started. Don't be put off by all those voices. You'll soon get sucked into the conversations of the characters, and be feeling their joys and sadness. This book is touching, sad, sexy and comic. It was a shame it had to end! I shall look out for his other books.

Extract

You should call it The Feast of Love. I'm an expert on that. I should write that book. Actually, I should be in that book. You should put me in your novel. I'm an expert on love. I've just broken up with my second wife, after all. I'm in an emotional tangle. Maybe I'd shoot myself before the final chapter. Your readers would wonder about the outcome... I've got an idea. It'll solve all your problems and it'll solve mine. Why don't you let me talk? Let everybody talk. I'll send you people, you know, actual people, for a change, like for instance human beings who genuinely exist and you listen to them for a while. Everybody's got a story, and we'll start telling you the stories we have.

Parallels