Believers: A Novella and Stories (Vintage Contemporaries) - Softcover

Baxter, Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679776532 ISBN 13: 9780679776536

Publisher: Vintage, 1998

Synopsis

Many critics have sought to describe Charles Baxter's unparalleled gift for revealing the unexpected in the ordinary, for capturing the fleeting moments that indelibly define a life, for articulating the moral and emotional quandaries that can besiege us as we balance love and responsibility. All these hallmarks of Baxter's work are on brilliant display in "Believers," his fourth collection of short fiction. In 'Reincarnation, ' the last hours of a summer dinner party find three couples musing about their previous lives and recalling those instances of recognition that have the power to transform them in the here and now. In 'The Cures for Love' a young woman, a classicist distraught over a love affair gone bad, finds unexpected help and solace in the words of Ovid. And in the title novella, a piece that has the tonal control of a concerto, a father's fall from grace is related in his son's story about 'fascism and believers, a story of the American Midwest and how I came to be conceived and brought into the world by a priest.' In each of the stories gathered here we see the delicate intersection of faith and conviction: between what we want to believe and what we need to believe.

About this title

About the Author:

Charles Baxter is the author of the novels The Feast of Love(nominated for the National Book Award), The Soul Thief, Saul and Patsy, Shadow Play, and First Light, and the story collections Gryphon, Believers, A Relative Stranger, Through the Safety Net, and Harmony of the World. The stories "Bravery" and "Charity," which appear in There's Something I Want You to Do, were included in Best American Short Stories. Baxter lives in Minneapolis and teaches at the University of Minnesota and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

From the Inside Flap:

With his five previous books of fiction, Charles Baxter established himself as a contemporary literary master, in the traditions of Raymond Carver, William Maxwell, and Alice Munro. This radiant new collection confirms Baxter's ability to revel in the surfaces of seemingly ordinary lives while uncovering their bedrock of passion, madness, levity and grief.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0679776532
• ISBN 13: 9780679776536
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288