Without question Charles Baxter, whose ravishing novel The Feast of Love was a National Book Award finalist, is one of our finest contemporary writers. These two books, set in the Michigan landscape that Baxter has made his own, display his unparalleled gift for revealing the unexpected in everyday life. The often-curious connections of relatives and strangers are illuminated in the thirteen exquisite stories of A Relative Stranger. "You can't just get a brother off the street," a character says, but indeed he does.
Publishers Weekly,Most of the protagonists in these 13 wonderfully varied, often funny stories set by Baxter ( Harmony of the World ) in Michigan are complex men reaching for answers that elude them. On the other hand their women, anchored in a simple and peaceful pragmatism, more wisely accept their mates' odd hungers and lunatic streaks. Stephen in ``Lake Stephen'' feels dissatisfied with Jan, his lover--she always seems to know in advance what he will do and say. When he importunes her to throw caution to the wind for once, she complies, but less than innocently: ``Unless she broke the rules now,'' Jan realizes, ``he would not follow the rules later.'' In ``Westland'' Warren turns in a teenage runaway and, as a result, is drawn with his family into the lives of strangers, much as Cooper in ``Shelter'' terrifies his wife and child with his quixotic gesture of inviting derelicts into their home. In Baxter's best and final story, ``Saul and Patsy Are Pregnant,'' the characters from preceding stories come together, and their collective longing is resolved. Saul learns what the women have always known: happiness, if such a thing can exist, is love. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
