Delightful and profoundly moving,
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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.
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Best of Baxter
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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.
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Love This Book
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Great stories--really moving, plus funny. Just a great relaxing, funny, moving read for traveling or curling up on a rainy day.
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An American Master Outdoes Himself
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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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Ambitious new collection by underrated American master.
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Charles Baxter is a writer's writer; his prose is dazzlingly precise, his dialogue is unerringly sharp, and his themes are big: God, love, and the loss of both. He's they type of writer who inspires envy among other writers (his fans the acknowledged contemporary queen of short fiction, Alice Munro.) So why is his latest collection so unsatisfying? Baxter's writing is as sharp as usual, but the tone is darker, relentlessly darker at that. Most of the stories are devoid of hope; most of the characters are guilty of the basest acts (misplaced revenge, lust for ex-spouses, and fascism all rear their ugly heads.) I don't mind darkness, but Baxter finds little relief in these pieces; there are no contrasts, no moments of light to make the darkness stand out. Still, the stories hang in the memory. "Time Exposure," in which a husband, acting out of a false sense of justice, nearly murders a neighbor for an imagined crime, gets under the skin.
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