![]() "Like You'd Understand, Anyway" is made up almost entirely of fictional testimonies from situations that quickly disintegrate - and it's not hard to keep reading out of simple rubbernecking. Read the book slowly enough, and you will believe every one of them. Indeed, he can now count Aeschylus, the first female cosmonaut, and the willing executioner of the French Revolution among his narrators. Shepard's latest collection, "Like You'd Understand, Anyway," recently nominated for the National Book Award, has an even wider range of field, its title practically daring readers to object to how far outside our world Shepard has gone this time. His short stories have wormed their way aboard the Hindenburg, beneath Communist revolutions, and into the mind of John Ashcroft, even. "Project X," his anxious 2004 novel, told the story of a Columbine-like school shooting. Jim Shepard's work has always felt a bit like a brief and terrifying roller-coaster that spits you out the other end thrilled and breathless, yet wondering why you wanted to be shot into such a dark cave of tracks in the first place. ![]()
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