Saul and Patsy

by Charles Baxter

From the winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence and “one of our most gifted writers” ( Chicago Tribune ), Saul and Patsy is "stunning, never predictable, glimmering fiction, full of mischief and insight" ( The Los Angeles Times).

Five Oaks, Michigan is not exactly where Saul and Patsy meant to end up. Both from the East Coast, they met in college, fell in love, and settled down to married life in the Midwest. Saul is Jewish and a compulsively inventive worrier; Patsy is gentile and cheerfully pragmatic. On Saul’s initiative (and to his continual dismay) they have moved to this small town–a place so devoid of irony as to be virtually “a museum of earlier American feelings”–where he has taken a job teaching high school.

Soon this brainy and guiltily happy couple will find children have become a part of their lives, first their own baby daughter and then an unloved, unlovable boy named Gordy Himmelman. It is Gordy who will throw Saul and Patsy’s lives into disarray with an inscrutable act of violence. As timely as a news flash yet informed by an immemorial understanding of human character, Saul and Patsy is a genuine miracle.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Literary Fiction, Book Club, Adult, Contemporary, Jewish

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Charles Baxter was born in Minneapolis and graduated from Macalester College, in Saint Paul. After completing graduate work in English at the State University of New York at Buffalo, he taught for several years at Wayne State University in Detroit. In 1989, he moved to the Department of English at the University of Michigan--Ann Arbor and its MFA program. He now teaches at the University of Minnesota.

Baxter is the author of 4 novels, 4 collections of short stories, 3 collections of poems, a collection of essays on fiction and is the editor of other works. His works of fiction include Believers , The Feast of Love (nominated for the National Book Award), Saul and Patsy , and Through the Safety Net . He lives in Minneapolis.

Reviews

[christa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Saul and Patsy are in love. (Maybe too much so, according to Saul's mother, who thinks it's show-offy to be so in love and that it makes other people uncomfortable). They live in a small town in Michigan, off a dirt road, where they have moved from the east coast because of Saul's whim to be a teacher.

"Saul and Patsy": yet another sigh-inducing and pleasant Charles Baxter novel.

Saul is neurotic, in his own head, and wishes the rest of the world was like Patsy. Meanwhile, she is the voice of reason, the laid-back meh, maybe-I'll-work-at-a-bank half of the relationship, talking Saul off the ledge (or roof, as the case may be).

More than building up to some sort of frenzied climax, the novel follows them quietly through little chapters of their life: That time they flipped the car after that party; Saul's albino deer sightings; Patsy's intuition toward what, if anything, is growing in her uterus. Characters drift in and out, including Saul's mom, who has taken a 17-year-old lover.

Saul's student Gordy, from a remedial writing class, starts showing up in their front yard and staring at the house. Saul drives Gordy home, and this strange boy shows up again and again. Eventually the student does something that reads like the last chapter of a book, but instead instigates a city-wide cult-like following and puts Saul and Patsy in the spotlight.

Gah. I love Charles Baxter. You can read a paragraph and something major happens right in the middle of it and you think "Wait. Did that just happen?" He never quickens the pace of plays a loco clarinet to announce that something big is on the horizon. It just happens. Next scene.

He can take a story of a lovey dovey two-some, dangle tragedy in front of them, and then make it go away. He's unpredictable even in the most everyday, no-frills story.

But best of all, if you read it slowly enough, you can hear Morgan Freeman narrating it. Just like he did in the film adaptation of Baxter's novel "Feast of Love." And, lo, if that isn't fun.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

No I didn’t see anything coming!!!

[Richard · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have no doubt that Charles Baxter will be noted as one of our most thoughtful and philosophic American writers of this time period. He has moved impressively from short story collections (my experience with his work started with _A Relative Stranger_) to a full-blown novelist. Even from his first novel, _First Light_, Baxter has shown a great mixture of a kind of old-school character depth, with high school teachers able to discuss railroad companies and quote classics in normal conversation, mixed in with a clearly modern sense of the world. His characters remind me somewhat of people who occupy Tony Hoagland poems--people who seem to be stuck in a netherworld of intelligentsia and down-home simplicity. _The Feast of Love_ was a good choice as a finalist for an NBA--perhaps it should have won, but I haven't yet read the competition and winner.

But this novel doesn't ring out like other works, and it seems to spend too long mulling about with little engagement. I almost regret saying these things, and almost feel that I need to rethink my priorities, that maybe I've become a jaded or oversimplified reader, for I very nearly put down this book after about forty pages because I was feeling that Baxter was a little more invested in the young couple that is the primary focus of this book than he was able to convey to me.

To tell the truth, the only thing that really brought me back to this book to gut it out and read through the rest is that the back cover promised some violence, something I would not have predicted from my initial experience in the reading.

Now I really feel ashamed. Baxter is such a wonderful writer, who is able to take the oft-used gimmick of quirkiness and use it to his advantage. Usually, his characters engage me me solely for their oddities that bring out their humanity rather than display their eccentricities. But even with the promised violence of this book, I remained unengaged to the end.

I think Baxter is a wonderful writer. Really. And it is the truly fantastic writer who gets the job done, who finishes a work even though lightning hasn't struck yet and do his job and get his efforts out there into the world.

But unfortunately, this one just wasn't one of his best efforts. But I shouldn't be the one to talk--after all, HE is the one who later put out _The Feast of Love_ and very nearly got one of the big prizes, and I just sit here typing this review.

[Sherril · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ 1/2. So, I received an email today from BookBub, suggesting I buy the novel, First Light by Charles Baxter. I looked it up both on Amazon and Goodreads, to find that the author had also written a book, which to my surprise, I had read some 15 years ago and still had on my bookshelf called, Saul and Patsy, and now that I thought of it, I’d enjoyed very much. The two things I could still recall about Saul and Patsy were, one, that the storytelling was excellent and two, that I related to the character Saul, a Jewish young man who with his gentile wife, finds himself living in the heartland of America, a bit of a fish out of water, having grown up in the New York metropolitan area. I too found myself smack in the middle of the country at Wichita State University, in graduate school, which, in many ways I loved, but eventually left, needing to return to where I could get a real bagel. I found this description which sums it up for me,…”a place so devoid of irony as to be virtually “a museum of earlier American feelings.” One other thing, the book has a great, attractive book cover, something I very much miss, now that I buy so many of my books, including Charles Baxter’s First Light, on kindle.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have greatly admired a number of Baxter's other novels; but I see that several parts of this were originally published as short stories, and the whole thing has that loose, tied-together feel that results from independent episodes in search of a link. Every paragraph, almost every sentence is a gem, but the whole is too vague and unengaging to stay memorable for me. The main characters--the married couple of Saul and Patsy--are vivid and complicated. Their relationship is prickly and loving, and they both learn (to some extent) to adapt to what happens to them. But the other attempts to gin up significance and enlarge the meaning of the story didn't connect with me. An example is the repellent teenager named Gordy Himmelman (heaven-man) who dies half-way through the novel and towards whom Saul can't decide whether he himself played the role of John the Baptist or Judas. Not too subtle; and it doesn't really go anywhere.

[Jennifer Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

I kept waiting for a plot. The writing was all over the place as if the writer would think of something random and add it to the story. I only finished the book because I kept thinking it would change.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an avid admirer of Baxter's work, this promising novel was a bit of a let down. I'd just read the short story that introduced Saul and Patsy earlier this year, and they are very interesting characters, a transplanted Jewish intellectual and his free-spirited wife who find themselves settling in the outskirts of suburban Michigan. The first half of the novel is engaging and mature, as it traces the development of their relationship from insatiable newlyweds to the challenges of early parenthood. It's when Baxter turns the focus of the novel away from them, introducing minor characters too late in the novel for their significance to match how the plot pivots on them, that the novel sizzles out. The ending is redeemed by a coda for Saul that perfectly captures the moment when we let go of childish ideals and start learning to live for small moments of triumph, but there's much clumsy plotting to read through to get to it.

[Darbie Segraves · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had a very unique story line. Saul and Patsy are a happily married couple that moves out into the middle of no where for Saul to become a high school writing teacher. Soon the couple becomes parents to their new daughter Mary Esther. The couple had two very different personalities. Saul was always worried about something, no matter how minor it may be opposed to Patsy being happy and care free. Perhaps Saul does have real problems to fret over when one of his troubled students begins to open up to him. Gordy's dark character and personality will forever change the lives of this family. The twists and turns in this book are crazy!

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this a couple summers ago, so it's a little distant, but what I remember is that it's about how even within a relationship you can still be lonely and alone. it sounds sad, but it didn't make me sad, just made me reflect. it's very pensive and there are some beautifully written description of summer nights and that make me feel like i lived in this little lake town in michigan. he writes about characters that I know...maybe you will too? I really like his style and definitely will check out his other novels.

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe not quite as engaging as some of BAxter's other books, but still pretty damn good. Lately I've come to think of him as a kind of Midwestern magical Realist -- it's just that the magic sometimes gets hard to see in the Midwestern realism. This is one of the books that should be read that way, I think. Don't look for character and character development in the usual way of these things; look for it in the moments when it intersects with the inexplicable. Here's a thing I wrote back in the day:

https://annarborobserver.com/articles...

[Cassandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was frustrating. I am no expert, only a lay person, but I love fiction for its ability to make my soul richer. Most of the times this happens when I meet at admirable or complex characters with redeeming, relatable, qualities.

Disappointed by the navel gazing self sabotaging husband character and didn’t want to spend time seeing how it would continue to disrupt his life. Made it to the violence, was unique but didn’t make up for the meandering husband character.

[Bookhuw · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a sort of twee tone to this, which I found a bit off-putting. The pacing is unusual: it never seems to vary, with the dramatic and the mundane narrated in the same off-hand way. Initially, this is a problem as it meanders too much, but it does get better – around the 100 page mark – and then seems to find its stride, but it never manages to be gripping or moving.

[Aeri · Rating 1 out of 5]

quite possibly one of the most annoying books i have ever read.
saul is a really forced cliched character. baxter does a horrible job of attempting to create a realistic "neurotic jewish" guy. it's been done before, by far better writers.

[Alex Goulder · Rating 2 out of 5]

Saul wins MABC (most annoying book character) award due to his relentless self-absorption and his offensively stereotypically "Jewish" intellectual and cultural traits. Charles Baxter is among my favorite short story writers but, well, not so much at long-form fiction.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

When you don't like the characters as portrayed, it is hard to continue reading the book. I think he is a good writer, or else he couldn't have shown all the annoying aspects of their personalities in such a way that they bothered me enough to not want to read anymore about them. Yikes.

[Alexa · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a very slow read ... I think in part because I didn't really connect with either of the main characters, but also because it just felt odd. Off. Hard to become immersed in.

I couldn't place the story in time, for example. We start with a young married couple living in a rural home on a dirt road and spending each evening playing Scrabble - the language, the descriptions, made me feel this was maybe set in the mid-20th century. But then slowly one thing after another would casually be mentioned that made me feel that maybe the setting was more modern than I originally thought. Maybe it's in the 70s? Maybe it's the 80's. They mention "the Web" so maybe this is in the late 90's? Then towards the end of the book they mentioned trick or treaters coming in Osama bin Laden costumes, so it's clearly somewhere in the 2000's. It was disconcerting to not be able to imagine the world being described because it kept changing on me. And the characters weren't particularly nice, or charming, or endearing, or even very relatable.

And most of Part 3 was difficult to read because of the subject matter. There were a few parts of the book that I did appreciate but it was such an off-putting read that I doubt I would read it again.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Baxter created some really interesting characters and a fascinating plot. My only criticism of the married couple, Saul and Patsy, is that they seemed a bit snobbish and condescending regarding living in the Midwest. Also, I think Baxter overdoes the whole neurotic Jewish guy bit in his characterization of Saul. His characterizations of the troubled teens, particularly Saul's quite unbelievably forgiving reaction to them, is fascinating.
Sometimes Baxter seems to try too hard to make a big statement regarding contemporary society. Nevertheless, he does so many things well that I'm giving this four stars. An enjoyable read.

[cynthia Byrne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Saul is a very strange guy - uxorious to a fault. His wife Patsy loves him on and off - mostly on, and the two of them have an odd life in a small midwestern town, where they are stalked by a kid named Gordy, who is in Saul’s remedial reading class. The kid is autistic probably, and obsessed with Saul and maybe Patsy too. Finally, Gordy starts an obsession by the teens in town by putting a gun to his head in Saul and Patsy’s yard. Rumors fuel the kids’ obsession and all comes close to tragedy until Saul takes some unusual steps to protect his home and family. An unusual story with original characters.

[Vincent Eaton · Rating 4 out of 5]

After starting and abandoning eight novels - some after 50 pages, some after a few aching pages - I returned to Charles Baxter during my holiday and was well pleased. Fiction about domestic matters in a small mid-Western towns would usually not engage my oh-boy! imagination. Baxter's prose is luminous, precise, with extended passages that recall John Updike, but more fun because less self-important. Love, sex, marriage, kids, students, suicidal student, mothers, mothers-in-law, tricky brothers, a barber, characters who fit into a leisurely plot that takes its time because the prose wants to look around some, and so does the contented reader.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Charles Baxter, but he is a much better short story writer than he is a novelist. He turned this into a strength with his novel Feast of Love, which consisted of loosely connected short stories that all managed to hang together to make a novel. No such luck here. Despite the title, the focus is squarely on the character of Saul, who moves to a small town in Michigan with his wife, Patsy, to become a high school teacher. Stuff happens, very episodically, and Baxter jumps around to other characters sometimes. While individual moments worked (very powerfully), it just didn't hang together for me.

[Stephanie A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I skimmed more than read after Part I, but I read enough to get the general gist of the plot/climax and decide I wasn't about to even modestly challenge my brain to decipher the literary writing for characters I didn't care about, i.e. anyone not mentioned in the book title. But I did thoroughly enjoy the beginning, and their relationship, and was particularly fond of the overly anxious and fidgety Saul as a narrator, so I'm glad I got to know them.

[Patti Prevost · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was ready to give this book 3 stars and then I got to the end. I literally said out loud “well that ending sucked”. I kept hoping the reason for all the words and stories would come together and make me say, “aaahh, I get it now”, but nope, just a shitty last couple of chapters. I suppose it was an insight into marriage, how you go from young lovers to tired parents of kids, but I somehow missed the insight.

[Pam Van Dyk Writes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was torn between giving this book a 3 star or 4 star review. It takes place in the 1980s and delves deeply into Saul and Patsy's marriage. I loved the alternating points-of-view, but at times, Saul was tiring. His insecurities felt unresolvable, even at the end.

[Sam Small · Rating 3 out of 5]

the characters are so cynical that I got frustrated! I really think this is a way too extended short story. Gorgeous, intense scenes on every page & random POV changes. Sounds good, but is really dense for such a slow moving novel

[Fareeda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Different writing style. I enjoyed how the story progressed over time flowed without missing a beat.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a MAlissa book, so as long as she likes it that's as that matters.

[Nancy]

Audio

[Katy Lovejoy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad to read the first time but I won't read again

[Suzette Chivers · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't like the main characters, and the ending made zero sense.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5