Gryphon by Charles Baxter
Pantheon Books, 2011
404 pages, $27.95 (hardcover)
Are you like me when you have a new anthology or collection of short stories in hand, you read the first and the last thinking they are probably the best? I loved Baxter’s Believers, and was disappointed by his lose-structured novel, Feast of Love, so I thought, on which side of the approval meter will Gryphon register. The needle is off the dial to the right. This is like discovering Raymond Carver you haven’t read. It is, literally, life changing. Some of the stories have appeared before, but this collection begins gradually and hits its stride with “Harmony of the World.” From then on we are in the writer’s hands. Read the rest of this entry ?
