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Shadow Play: A Novel
Here is the novel that admirers of Charles Baxter's earlier work, the luminous novel First Light and his many award-winning stories, have been waiting for. Calling on his gift for revealing the unexpected dangers just below the surface of ordinary life, he focuses now on the Michigan town of Five Oaks and that precarious border where personal love and social responsibility intersect.
At the center of Shadow Play is a Faustian contract made when Wyatt Palmer, the young assistant city manager of Five Oaks, meets up with a former classmate, Jerry Schwartzwalder, an ominous modern version of the devil. Now rich, Schwartzwalder presents a business deal too good for Wyatt to refuse: he will bring a chemical plant to the economically depressed area, but the town must look the other way if a few people are hurt in the bargain. The deal is made and the town prospers, but soon a sacrifice, personally devastating and unsuspected, is required. Wyatt, now desperate, becomes a dark force himself. In breaking free of his part of the deal, he moves toward an act of violence that brings the novel to an almost unbearable pitch.
Wyatt's own narrative counterpoints the lives of the people around him. There's his wife, Susan, an expert in magic and balance; Cyril, his ne'er-do-well cousin and his shadow self; and Alyse, the business colleague whose sexual irony attracts Wyatt. His drifty mother, Jeanne, with her secret language, aids him in shedding his old self. And, most important, there is Ellen, Wyatt's aunt, who has concluded that God, everywhere present but totally indifferent, watches us through pure curiosity - and who is writing her own Bible to prove it.
Shadow Play goes to the heart of the moral and spiritual contracts being made everywhere in the name of comfort and prosperity. Heedlessness is here - in the human realm, toward nature, and even toward the objects we create and discard - but so is the possibility of transcendence. At novel's end, a state of mysterious joy
At the center of Shadow Play is a Faustian contract made when Wyatt Palmer, the young assistant city manager of Five Oaks, meets up with a former classmate, Jerry Schwartzwalder, an ominous modern version of the devil. Now rich, Schwartzwalder presents a business deal too good for Wyatt to refuse: he will bring a chemical plant to the economically depressed area, but the town must look the other way if a few people are hurt in the bargain. The deal is made and the town prospers, but soon a sacrifice, personally devastating and unsuspected, is required. Wyatt, now desperate, becomes a dark force himself. In breaking free of his part of the deal, he moves toward an act of violence that brings the novel to an almost unbearable pitch.
Wyatt's own narrative counterpoints the lives of the people around him. There's his wife, Susan, an expert in magic and balance; Cyril, his ne'er-do-well cousin and his shadow self; and Alyse, the business colleague whose sexual irony attracts Wyatt. His drifty mother, Jeanne, with her secret language, aids him in shedding his old self. And, most important, there is Ellen, Wyatt's aunt, who has concluded that God, everywhere present but totally indifferent, watches us through pure curiosity - and who is writing her own Bible to prove it.
Shadow Play goes to the heart of the moral and spiritual contracts being made everywhere in the name of comfort and prosperity. Heedlessness is here - in the human realm, toward nature, and even toward the objects we create and discard - but so is the possibility of transcendence. At novel's end, a state of mysterious joy
399 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
6 people are currently reading
200 people want to read
About the author
Charles Baxter
94 books429 followersCharles 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
January 12, 2019
I read this book in the 90's. Mary Lynn loaned it to me. I thought it was wonderful. Finding it recently, and realizing it was a great book to read while traveling, I brought it with me. Remembered nothing of it except that it was by Charles Baxter, one of my favorite authors. The characters are quirky...along the lines of Anne Tyler's characters. But Baxter's struggle more with moral dilemmas. I love the main character, Wyatt, and his mother Jeanne, who speaks in metaphors using language that doesn't exist, but feels as though it should. Ellen, his aunt who raises children who aren't hers, and Susan, Wyatt's love.
It's a novel centered in a small town in the small town of Five Oaks, Michigan. This is where the protagonist, Wyatt, was born and where he returns when he falls in love and marries. Here’s the town: “ The biggest employer got to be the county prison…the other businesses were mostly gone and the men and women here didn’t know what hit them. This is not a city where people know how to use leisure time. You give them a chance to think, they get scared. And when that happens what they’ll do is, they’ll just leave. They’ll pack their bags and drive straight for Los Angeles, a mistake of course, I don’t have to tell you that, because they think a suntan is the answer for worry. It must be because unemployment looks better with a beach ball and an umbrella."
Wyatt loved his dad who was pretty much a disappointment to Wyatt’s mother.
And Wyatt is a boy saved by people: by his dad (lightning), by the meanest boy in town, Donald (drowning) by his wife (love).
The writing is gorgeous and idiosyncratic. There are words used in ways I’ve never seen them used. Here’s a paragraph that struck me that way: “Standing in the doorway, he felt the rain spattering down on his face. He had always liked the paraphernalia of storms: hair, lightning, darkness, thunder…his friend Harry admits he hides under the table during storms. “But it’s a show,” Wyatt had said. “Storms are. You got to watch it or you miss it.” Here’s another one: Because she didn’t like the direction of the conversation, all those cul-de-sacs and dead ends, she asked, “What’s your major?” The book is also sprinkled with clichés: “She wanted his emptiness to be filled with her emptiness.” The characters’ quirkiness is described wonderfully. Donald’s “mischief” seems really evil, and yet...
There are quite a few characters whose motivation seems curiosity. If I do this bizarre thing, what will happen?”
After this reading, I checked some reviews of the book after it was originally published. Most of them were tepid, at best. They did describe him the way some critics describe Anne Tyler. One reviewer, praising The Feast of Love, the book Baxter wrote that won the National Book Award, wrote: “In his earlier novels, Baxter stared with equal fervor at every member of his cast. In this book, he seems to have relaxed and admitted that some people are simply more interesting than others, and he has weighted his narrative accordingly.” I agree that he approaches each of these characters with profound interest. I think he'd deny that each of these characters isn't interesting. For him, they are. But I suppose it's a legitimate criticism. Still, I can't help but think of lauded authors who juggle far more characters and follow the arc of each of their lives. I LIKED that even Donald had his story told.
It's a novel centered in a small town in the small town of Five Oaks, Michigan. This is where the protagonist, Wyatt, was born and where he returns when he falls in love and marries. Here’s the town: “ The biggest employer got to be the county prison…the other businesses were mostly gone and the men and women here didn’t know what hit them. This is not a city where people know how to use leisure time. You give them a chance to think, they get scared. And when that happens what they’ll do is, they’ll just leave. They’ll pack their bags and drive straight for Los Angeles, a mistake of course, I don’t have to tell you that, because they think a suntan is the answer for worry. It must be because unemployment looks better with a beach ball and an umbrella."
Wyatt loved his dad who was pretty much a disappointment to Wyatt’s mother.
And Wyatt is a boy saved by people: by his dad (lightning), by the meanest boy in town, Donald (drowning) by his wife (love).
The writing is gorgeous and idiosyncratic. There are words used in ways I’ve never seen them used. Here’s a paragraph that struck me that way: “Standing in the doorway, he felt the rain spattering down on his face. He had always liked the paraphernalia of storms: hair, lightning, darkness, thunder…his friend Harry admits he hides under the table during storms. “But it’s a show,” Wyatt had said. “Storms are. You got to watch it or you miss it.” Here’s another one: Because she didn’t like the direction of the conversation, all those cul-de-sacs and dead ends, she asked, “What’s your major?” The book is also sprinkled with clichés: “She wanted his emptiness to be filled with her emptiness.” The characters’ quirkiness is described wonderfully. Donald’s “mischief” seems really evil, and yet...
There are quite a few characters whose motivation seems curiosity. If I do this bizarre thing, what will happen?”
After this reading, I checked some reviews of the book after it was originally published. Most of them were tepid, at best. They did describe him the way some critics describe Anne Tyler. One reviewer, praising The Feast of Love, the book Baxter wrote that won the National Book Award, wrote: “In his earlier novels, Baxter stared with equal fervor at every member of his cast. In this book, he seems to have relaxed and admitted that some people are simply more interesting than others, and he has weighted his narrative accordingly.” I agree that he approaches each of these characters with profound interest. I think he'd deny that each of these characters isn't interesting. For him, they are. But I suppose it's a legitimate criticism. Still, I can't help but think of lauded authors who juggle far more characters and follow the arc of each of their lives. I LIKED that even Donald had his story told.
September 6, 2009
i don't generally read or like contemporary fiction because it's all so dryly realistic. it's like everyone has swallowed the scientific worldview wholesale without, of course, understanding the least thing about it, other than the fact that everything must be obvious and boring. and even when writers try to move into the world of myth, feeling and imagination, they can't do it without hedging their bets with irony and intellectual distance. I HATE IT.
this book is not like that, and i loved it. this is a book that lives in the gray area, that accepts that life (at least the experience of it) is strange, fantastic, enchanted, impossible. every page of this book is full of endless possibility; the sense that anything might happen. the story itself is very good, and the writing is impeccable, but it's the sense of experienced reality that is so amazing and wonderful.
i don't even know who to compare baxter to. i've never read anything like this. it's not magical realism, but it's not realism, either. not fantasy or horror, though it feels like it. it's something else; a bit like richard hughes, or maybe a kinder, gentler patricia highsmith, or even w.g. sebald writing dickens or irving. pure storytelling in a kind of luminous fog, where you move forward in apprehension and wonder, and never know exactly where you are.
You don't know what happens to people. They don't even know what happens to them.
good stuff. read more.
this book is not like that, and i loved it. this is a book that lives in the gray area, that accepts that life (at least the experience of it) is strange, fantastic, enchanted, impossible. every page of this book is full of endless possibility; the sense that anything might happen. the story itself is very good, and the writing is impeccable, but it's the sense of experienced reality that is so amazing and wonderful.
i don't even know who to compare baxter to. i've never read anything like this. it's not magical realism, but it's not realism, either. not fantasy or horror, though it feels like it. it's something else; a bit like richard hughes, or maybe a kinder, gentler patricia highsmith, or even w.g. sebald writing dickens or irving. pure storytelling in a kind of luminous fog, where you move forward in apprehension and wonder, and never know exactly where you are.
You don't know what happens to people. They don't even know what happens to them.
good stuff. read more.
November 11, 2014
It’s hard for me to rate this novel. I started out loving it, but by the end I was impatient to be done with it. We look in on the life of the protagonist, Wyatt, as an eight-year-old boy trying to run away from his eccentric family, as a young college student falling in love with the woman who will become his wife, and as a young-ish civil servant and family man who finds himself navigating difficult moral waters when his various responsibilities to family and community come into conflict. The questions raised are important, to do with obligations--mostly self-imposed--and whether a degree of selling out is somehow inevitable as we age. And the characters are interestingly flawed and feel (mostly) real. Somehow, though, the book didn’t quite hold together for me; it was hard to see more than superficial connections between the boy, the young man, and the somewhat older man. Characters who are very important in the later part of the book, particularly Wyatt’s aunt and cousin, are entirely absent from the early chapters, so we never really understand the protagonist’s deep attachment to them. And while the writing was lovely, by the end it had become so abstractly lyrical, so deeply embedded in the minds of the various characters (some of whose minds are detached from reality), that I felt pushed away from both the people and the events.
March 21, 2020
Excellent writing. Charles Baxter spoke to one of my college writing classes in the late 80s and he was relatively impressive. I eventually picked up his short story collection "Through The Safety Net," which I read and (as I remember these many years later) enjoyed. I found much of the writing and use of language in this novel very engaging, but, as a novel, I don't think I really got the point. Interesting characters, interesting insights, but to what end? It's almost like a collection of short stories that are related but don't cohere into a whole. It is never really explored how the supposedly artistically-minded protagonist ended up as a prosaic bureaucrat. At the conclusion of the novel, his more or less insane mother's problems all appear to have been solved by moving to NYC from the Midwest. And I didn't buy his aunt's climactic spiritual ascension either. I like Charles Baxter as a writer, but found this novel somewhat lightweight.
September 1, 2021
American novelists of domestic drama/affairs are many, from John Updike to Anne Tyler, to which I add Charles Baxter. He has not had the huge success of these, nor the same recognition, but he's a fine prose stylist, delicate and imaginative. This novel, had it been published in the 50s/60s, around the time of Richard Yates Revolutionary Road, would have competed on equal footing for attention. Published during the Clinton years, it is part fascinating, part marking time in this reader's life. So, once in a while, fine, the story of a man, youth, marriage, small town life, disillusionment, well done, yet lacking urgency. Talented man, though.
August 3, 2018
Every summer I step away from my steady diet of science fiction and crime novels to read a 'regular' book. I normally read for dialogue and action, leaving behind the adverbs and adjectives as items weighing down my progress through the plot .... Here, in Shadow Play I enjoyed it all. Heavy in the narrative, everything mattered. He crafted his world and filled it with the most interesting people. And I didn't mind slowing down to take a walk beside him. This was a most wonderful wandering.
May 3, 2022
An early, accomplished, if somewhat overstuffed by one of my favorite authors. It's more or less the story of Wyatt Palmer, failed artist and assistant to the city manager in his tiny hometown, as he struggles to hold it together after a series of losses. There's a LOT in this shortish novel, rendering it unbalanced and lumpy, but the spine - Wyatt's relationship with his deadbeat by touchingly weird and self-aware cousin, Cyril - is utterly fantastic.
March 27, 2024
This best way to describe this book was strange but oddly realistic. The characters were so weird that it kept the book interesting. I didn’t have the slightest idea what this book was going to turn into, but it kept me mostly entertained. Not a whole lot happened other than the obvious event halfish way through, so it would’ve been nice for there to be more activity and happenings. Not sure if I’d recommend but it was a good filler book for the time I had.
December 4, 2022
I thought that this book would be a lot less cerebral than it was. The plot sounded interesting and I loved the quirky characters. However, I was looking for more of a plot driven story than characters talking in there heads.
June 8, 2019
This book is beautifully written and features truly fascinating characters.
July 9, 2025
I LOVED this book. Adored. Wowed by this book
November 19, 2023
Perhaps I should have taken as a sign how many years this book sat on my shelves without my reading it, but there have been plenty of books I neglected so long that I loved when I finally read them. I had almost culled this a few times, but I finally picked this up for a "Michigan author" prompt for a reading challenge. (This takes place in Michigan and Baxter had been living in Michigan when he wrote it.)
I was vaguely annoyed with this book from early on. I wanted to like Wyatt, but never really connected with him. And then something about the whole falling in love in college bit rubbed me wrong. But where this book really fell off the rails for me was the scene with the illicit dumping grounds. Such a huge violation of my sense of justice and the environment and I GET IT, YOU HAVE BIG FEELINGS ABOUT YOUR COUSIN, BUT YOU HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY HERE THAT IS BIGGER THAN THAT AND JUST... NOTHING... COMES FROM THAT? IT ONLY EXISTS TO FORESHADOW WORSE VIOLATIONS TO COME?!
I should have known full well then that this book was just Not For Me, but I forced myself to finish it for the reading challenge when I should have let this go. So now you have to hear me whine about it.
I did not care for this.
I was vaguely annoyed with this book from early on. I wanted to like Wyatt, but never really connected with him. And then something about the whole falling in love in college bit rubbed me wrong. But where this book really fell off the rails for me was the scene with the illicit dumping grounds. Such a huge violation of my sense of justice and the environment and I GET IT, YOU HAVE BIG FEELINGS ABOUT YOUR COUSIN, BUT YOU HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY HERE THAT IS BIGGER THAN THAT AND JUST... NOTHING... COMES FROM THAT? IT ONLY EXISTS TO FORESHADOW WORSE VIOLATIONS TO COME?!
I should have known full well then that this book was just Not For Me, but I forced myself to finish it for the reading challenge when I should have let this go. So now you have to hear me whine about it.
I did not care for this.
April 25, 2013
Another well-written novel that didn’t quite make it. Part of the problem is his sensibility, which is a bit quirky for me, but this is also one of his charms. I made it through the novel, but I could have put it down at any point. One thing that attracted me was that the main character is an assistant city manager, but there is almost nothing about what he does. And what is billed as an ethical challenge – a chemical factory that causes serious health problems for employees, but not neighbors – is treated as a personal thing, with almost no political ramifications. Politics is foreign to Baxter’s personal, spiritually-oriented world.
June 15, 2010
Yes, this is an early Baxter novel. And yes, it's not as concrete as his later works. Maybe that's why I am so drawn to this one. The mystical/esoteric nature of it is compelling as it goes beyond just telling a story. The writing is strong, the ideas are well beyond the pale. Why should a novel simply tell us a story? Why shouldn't it tell us more about us? About life? About the universe? About the possible and the impossible? Baxter may never make the best-seller lists - a great reason to read him.
September 22, 2007
On loan from Steph ... not sure how I feel about it ... there are times when I wonder where is this going and why am I even bothering to read on and others (like this morning, over halfway through) where I thought, man this is getting good. Then tonight, 2/3 of the way through, past that high part and debating whether or not to continue. Not sure I'll ever finish - may just skim over the last part and see if I feel the need to read the remainder in full or if I'm satisfied with just the skim.
June 5, 2014
I couldn't stop thinking about the "Tree of Life" while i was reading the novel. Wyatt's character is excellent based on his fathers short time in the novel. Strong women characters, with Ellen being the mother not only to all the children, but the mother of the whole story. A book that shows what happens when you don't grow up like your suppose too, but a life that has full of depth none the same.
May 21, 2008
I love Charlie Baxter's short stories and just started reading his novels. His language is so beautiful that the plot almost doesn't matter. If you haven't already read "Gryphon," his hilarious short story about a crazy substitute teacher, you can find it in "Through the Safety Net." My 11-year old daughter loves it.
August 24, 2008
definitely pales in comparison to the rest of Baxter's oeuvre-- it's a very early book of his tho, so illuminating just to see how his work evolves. it's got the heart & poignance of his later stuff, however awkwardness of scenes & plot-moves & dialogue that feel more novice. i'm definitely plodding along w/ this one tho.
March 22, 2008
This was book was part of my getting to know CB. I remember the book itself didn't put me over the top, but in terms of getting to know an author....it was with this book I realized CB's work was something significant for me. And, it should be noted, no one evokes the midwest as well as him.
November 6, 2007
I'm a fan of Charles Baxter; however, this was not a good book. It was boring and a little two-dimensional. I remember just hitting this point and being extremely dissapointed.
August 25, 2008
A good solid read, but not my favorite Charles Baxter.
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December 15, 2014Not as good as Updike, but Baxter writes weirdly compelling characters. Just don't pick this up if you are looking for a "keep me up till 3 AM so I can finish it" kind of read.
August 23, 2009
A recommendation from my friend, Grayce. Reminded me of The World According to Garp at times. Great character development. The ending didn't quite satisfy, but a good read overall.
June 1, 2010
Memorable characters, interesting story. Builds slowly and follows through. Felt a little like I'd heard the story before is why four and a half and not five stars...
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January 12, 2013Book Discussion Book
March 30, 2014
May 2002
August 2, 2015
Just loved this book...Baxter's style is poetic, spiritual, quirky and thought-provoking
January 15, 2016
This book starts slowly, moves slowly and devolves into nonsense. I found it increasing difficult to read and was disappointed in the ending.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews