Saul and Patsy by Charles Baxter

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.

There were parts of this book that were good, where other parts were just ‘meh!’.  Saul’s character was a little hard to believe, and I didn’t really like him.  I thought the plot fell apart a bit at the end. I would try another book by Charles Baxter.

I waffled between 2 and 3 stars.
3 stars (Rated PG-13 for language and sex)