- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (Aug 12 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0307277607
- ISBN-13: 978-0307277602
- Product Dimensions: 13.2 x 1.7 x 20.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 281 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #311,244 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
“Forged from the world with a sharp eye and a careful ear, serving no agenda but literature's primary and oft-forgotten one: the delight of the reader.” —The New York Times Book Review“Gutsy, brilliantly imagined, strongly made, fresh and propulsive.” —Chicago Tribune“With a near spooky sense of empathy and a wit that finds its mark like lightning, the stories in Jim Shepard's Like You'd Understand, Anyway transport readers light-years beyond what they think they know of the world.” —Vanity Fair“Exquisite, multifaceted tales.” —The New Yorker “A macro book with a micro eye. These wildly diverse stories share a fascination with the inevitable cost of familial obligation and the inescapable fallout from disaster, both natural and human-made.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review“Cannily crafted. . . . The stories couldn't be funnier-or deadlier-in this mad-smart, wildly inventive set.” —Elle “Jim Shepard is really a terrific writer. And it's not just the precision of the sentences. . . . It is the way he captures people throughout time with such an exact piercing, as though he's mapped out every corresponding nerve that can make us go weak at the knees.” —Providence Journal“An astounding set of stories . . . so dangerously brilliant, they're radioactive.” —O Magazine
About the Author
Jim Shepard is the author of six novels and two previous collections of stories. He teaches at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.6 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Please Read This Book!!!!!!!, Jan 6 2009
By J. Morris "Tens Years Gone, Still a Member" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Like You'd Understand, Anyway (Paperback)
This is the book that made me a Jim Shepard fan. Time Magazine, in its "Best Of" for 2007, called it off-beat. I like to think of the stories as very human. You probably know next to nothing about Hadrian, Cosmonauts or executioners living during the French Revolution- and I know even less. But what makes these stories stand out is the combination of sympathetic, conflicted characterizations, vivid imagery and flashes of humor. Shepard isn't a best-selling author by any means- when I borrowed his second collection,"Love and Hydrogen," from the Library it turned out no one else had- but for anyone looking for involving, energetic storytelling should give this book a chance.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Understanding families, Sep 29 2010
By Bob S. (central NJ) - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Like You'd Understand, Anyway (Paperback)
In most of the short stories in "Like You'd Understand, Anyway," Jim Shepard examines families. We get family relationships from ancient Greece to present-day Texas through the eyes of a least-favorite son, a son yearning for a father, a troubled brother whose brother is even more troubled, and unsteady husbands. They are families in which, as the title suggests, understandings are less than perfect. Indeed, in many ways they are stories of isolation and estrangement within the family. Other stories are about obsessed explorers.Be advised that the weakest story is the first, which takes place at Chernobyl. The second story, the shortest in the book, hits home hard. From there, the book is continually fascinating.
Shepard is easy to read. Stories of great subtlety seem effortlessly written. Shepard presents characters we soon feel we know. Indeed, through his stories it is the reader who ends up understanding quite a bit.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow, April 25 2012
By tbn - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Like You'd Understand, Anyway (Paperback)
Amazing collection of stories. Not a single one disappoints. Shepard is one of the best living short story writers in America, right up there with Steven Millhauser and George Saunders. Not many can blend pathos and humour so effectively. Couldn't put in down.
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