Charles Baxter: Saul and Patsy

“A tale of generations at war and the troubled underside of placid Midwestern life. . abounding in irony and wit, and reminiscent of Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow.”

— San Francisco Chronicle

“Baxter reminds us that there is no regional monopoly on virtue and understanding, and no easy comforts for either self-appointed worldsavers or smug populists. And for all those hard lessons, Baxter also manages to deliver Saul and Patsy into something astonishingly close to a happy ending. Such indeed is the glory of love — and of fully realized fiction.”

— The Washington Post Book World

“One of our most gifted writers.”

— Chicago Tribune

“Thoughts sprawl delightfully, insanely, worryingly and sometimes brilliantly from Saul. . Funny and grown-up and generous.”

— The New York Times Book Review

“Charles Baxter’s novel Saul and Patsy is what it appears to be — a love story. But underneath its placid surface broils biting social commentary, a tale of lost teenagers adrift in a culture with no moral center.”

— The Oregonian

“ Saul and Patsy [is] a penetrating, surprisingly funny meditation on the dynamics of community belonging and acceptance.”

— The New York Times

“[Baxter] weaves magic into everyday life as if it were mere coincidence. Clark Kent is to Superman as Charles Baxter is to his writing.”

— Los Angeles Times

“It is rare that a novel, even a good one, manages to evoke contemporary life without being self-conscious about it. But that is what Baxter achieves here.”

— The New Yorker

“Watch out for the ‘quiet Midwestern’ tag on [Baxter’s] writing: That’s the iceberg you will strike. There is nothing simple in his universe, and nothing solely on the surface. Baxter’s intelligence and humor are submerged, and dangerous. You know — something like yours.”

— Detroit Free Press

“Baxter. . make[s] the mundane seem marvelous, the everyday seem extraordinary. . A clever and empathetic writer.”

— The Capital Times

“On almost every page at least one sentence would make me stop and shake my head in amazement and wonder.”

— Logan Browning, Houston Chronicle

“Both hilarious and poignant.”

— The Dallas Morning News

“Baxter defies the laws of publishing gravity: He went up and has yet to come down. . Baxter’s new novel is just as bright and fully imagined, just as energetic as anything that came before.”

— The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Brilliantly exploring the emotional intricacies of a young marriage, Charles Baxter’s latest novel, Saul and Patsy, uncannily exposes the least flattering side of human desire while celebrating the inexplicable power that love has over our lives.”

— Rocky Mountain News

“Baxter’s store of figurative language and rich, apt description is essentially boundless, and he draws generously from it for all the characters.”

— St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“More proof that Baxter is one of the best novelists anywhere. Every line packs a double punch — what it apparently means and what it really means.”

— Fort Worth Star-Telegram

About a year after they had rented the farmhouse with loose brown aluminum siding on Whitefeather Road, Saul began glaring out the west window after dinner into the unappeasable darkness that pressed against the glass, as if he were angry at the flat uncultivated farmland for being farmland instead of glass and cement. “No sane Jew,” he said, “ever lived on a dirt road.” Patsy reminded him of Poland, Russia, and the nineteenth century. Then she pointed down at the Scrabble board and told him to play. To spite her, he spelled out “axiom” over a triple-word score, for forty-two points. “That was totally different,” Saul said, shaking his head. “Completely different. That was when everyone but the landowners lived on dirt roads. It was a democracy of dirt roads, the nineteenth century.” Patsy was clutching her bottle of root beer with one hand and arranging the letters on her slate with the other. Her legs were crossed in the chair, and the bottle was positioned against the instep of her right foot. She looked up at him and smiled. He couldn’t help it. He smiled back. She was so beautiful, she could make him copy her gestures without his meaning to.

“We’re not landowners either,” she said. “We’re renters. Oh, I forgot to tell you. I had to go into the basement this afternoon for a screwdriver, and I noticed that there’s a mouse in the trap downstairs.”

“Is it dead?”

“Oh, sure.” She nodded. “It looks quite dead. You know — smashed back, slightly open mouth, and bulging eyes. I’ll spare you the full description. You’ll see the whole scene soon enough when you go down there — I didn’t want to throw it out myself.”

“I did the dishes,” Saul complained, sitting up, running his fingers through his hair.

“I could throw the mouse out,” Patsy said, leaning back, taking a swig and giving him another obliging smile. “I can now, and I could have then.” She straightened her leg and placed her foot against his ankle, and she raised her eyebrows as an ironic courtesy. “But the truth is, those little critters give me the whimwhams, and I’d rather not. I’d rather you did it, Saul. Just, you know, as a favor to me. You do it, my man, and there might be something in it for you.”

“What? What would be in it for me?”

“The trick in negotiations,” she said, “is not to make promises too soon. Why don’t you just do it as a favor to me? A sort of little gratuitous act of kindness? One of them guys?”

He stood up, shaking the letters on the Scrabble board, and clomped in his white socks to the kitchen, where the flashlight was stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet that was so weak that the flashlight kept sliding down to the floor, though it was only halfway there now. “I didn’t say you had to do it instantly, ” Patsy shouted. “This very minute. You could wait until the game is over.”

“Well, if you didn’t want it thrown out now, you shouldn’t have mentioned it. Besides, I can’t concentrate,” Saul said, half to himself as he flicked the flashlight off and on, “thinking about that dead mouse.” The batteries were so low that the light from the bulb was foggy and brown. He opened the door to the basement, fanning stale air, and stared down the steps into the darkness that smelled of must and heating oil. He didn’t like the basement. At night, in bed, he thought he heard crying from down there, ancestral accusations. “You’ll do anything to beat me at Scrabble,” Saul said aloud to himself. “This is gamesmanship, honey. Don’t tell me otherwise.”

He snapped on the wall switch, and the shadows of the steps saw-toothed themselves in front of him. “I really don’t like this,” he said, walking down the stairs, a sliver from the banister leaping into the heel of his hand. “This is not my idea of a good time.” He heard Patsy say something consoling and inaudible.