There are ten stories. The first five are “Bravery”, “Loyalty”, “Chastity”, “Charity” and “Forbearance”; the remaining five are “Lust”, “Sloth”, “Avarice”, “Gluttony” and “Vanity”. In each, a character asks another – a friend, a lover, a stranger – to do something for him or her. Characters appear and re-appear in several of the stories at various stages of their lives. An event that occurs in one story is explained, from another character’s point of view, in a later one.
“Baxter’s characters muddle through small but pivotal moments, not so much confrontations as crossroads between love and destruction, desire and death…”
seem to be ordinary and familiar moments in ordinary and familiar lives. Under the surface, however, there is upheaval. Characters are buffeted by life, by events, by other people, by their own psyches. They behave with quiet heroism at times and with inexplicable vileness at others.
Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, said, “Baxter’s characters muddle through small but pivotal moments, not so much confrontations as crossroads between love and destruction, desire and death….The prose resonates with distinctive turns of phrase that capture human ambiguity and uncertainty: trouble waits patiently at home, irony is the new chastity, and a dying man lives in the house that pain designed for him.”
And Alison Lurie, in a review in The New York Review of Books (3/5/15), speaks of Baxter himself: “The modesty and refusal to kid himself that he shares with many of his characters are admirable traits, but ones that can have unfortunate effects on a literary reputation, which often favors self-deceptive vanity and boastfulness. He deserves to be far better known, and widely celebrated.” Amen to that!
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