What a marvelous writer Charles Baxter is. His prose is luminous, his imagery surprising, and the stories he tells are bottomless in their depth. Readers who have not already had the good fortune to make this writer's acquaintance in earlier works of fiction such as Shadow Play, Harmony of the World, and others have a rare treat in store for them in his latest collection of short stories, Believers. Here, in "The Cures for Love," Ovid returns from the dead to offer advice to a young woman whose lover has left her, while in "Kiss Away" an urban genie grants another young woman a wish for her boyfriend's love--a wish that proves double- edged. The collection's title novella, "Believers," is a son's account of his father, a former priest who "was vacated of his faith" when he met the woman he would one day marry. As this novella and the eponymous collection suggest, faith is at the crux of all these stories--lost faith, lack of faith, transient faith. Belief in God or in one's lover or in oneself, whatever shape it assumes, is the essential quality Baxter's characters seek, and sometimes find. These stories demand more than one reading, and they will, with each revisiting, yield some new and telling insight that makes you wonder that you never noticed it before.
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