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Oct 30, 2007

Sarah rated it:

Like You’d Understand Anyway is a collection of all first-person short stories, though the similarities between them end there. The settings and time periods range from the site of Hadrian’s Wall during the late Roman Empire, to present day Alaska, to Chernobyl during the nuclear meltdown, to gothic France, to summer camp in 1960s America.

In these stories, Shepard does something that very, very few contemporary do these days: he uses his imagination and has fun. No, you won’t find st More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Apr 01, 2008

Laura rated it:

If you like short stories, you should not fail to pick up this volume, Shepard's third. Shepard's writing has a breadth pretty much unmatched in modern fiction -- he writes in wildly divergent voices and there's not a clumsy piece of prose, or even a misstep, in a single one of them.

If Jim Shepard doesn't win the National Book Award for this work, they should just abolish the damn award and have done with it. Either that or be honest about it and just give it to random books chosen b More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Oct 17, 2007

Mike rated it:

Serendipity. I had gotten this out of the library just before the NBA announcement--don't recall why, except that Shepard is a writer touted by so many to me over the years, yet I've only read a story or two, here and there.

I'm trying to divvy up my attention over three story collections (all while also re-reading the books for the three classes I'm teaching), to give each collection a chance to breathe.

But I picked up Shepard last night and wolfed down the first three More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 01, 2008

Owen rated it:

Currently a finalist for The National Book Award, an award he should definitely win with the strength of these stories. Unfortunately he didn't win. Instead, Denis Johnson won the award for... actually he won it for JESUS'S SON, but I guess you could say he won it for TREE OF SMOKE.

READ THESE STORIES!

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 14, 2008

Sarah rated it:

Let me first just clarify my rating system. If I give it four stars, that means I recommend it to you, Dear Reader, whoever you are. So don't take the lack of the fifth as a lack of enthusiasm! The fifth just signifies a) something I will reread and/or b) something that I was happy as a pig in shit while reading. SO, this puppy may get four stars, but I've been recommending it to everyone like John the Baptist recommended Jesus (please alert me if this is a crappy simile, because my Bible-re More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 26, 2007

Steve rated it:

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Oct 30, 2007

Anne rated it:

Depressing, downbeat, downright morbid? Ah, it must be literary fiction, the type of reading that's too emo hipster for me. Jim Shepard's short-story collection is on the National Book Award shortlist, with scores of rave reviews from popular publications and users of this site. To be fair, it must be very well written, because it kept me reading most of the way through despite my predispositions. Shepard sticks to certain themes: all his protagonists are men living in extreme settings (from the More...

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Dec 17, 2007

Jessica rated it:

This excellent, engaging collection of stories takes a remarkably broad look at masculine experiences throughout the ages, with emotional depth and a great deal of wit. The stories concern everyone from Chernobyl engineers to 19th century explorers in Australia to soldiers on Hadrian's wall to German anthropologist on the hunt for the Yeti in the 1930s to an executioner in the French Revolution to a miserable Connecticut teenager at summer camp in the 70s. One story has at its center a woman, th More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 10, 2007

Marion rated it:

This is one of the first collections of short stories that impressed me by its continuum, so to speak. Separately, the contexts of the stories almost overwhelm their characters, until Shepard pulls back a bit from the details and shows us brutality, or father/son hatred, or whatever relevant themes to the contemporary world. And, then, of course, are the stories set in modern times. The behaviors are shared from one story to the next and then you notice this strong rhythm between the stories, More...

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Jul 09, 2010

Harkinna rated it:

Both Tunneling to the Center of the Earth and Like you Would Understand, Anyway, read quickly. When books are that good it kind of makes you sad. I read Wilson’s book on the plane to Idaho and savored Shepard’s book for months, having a short story here and there as I felt the need.

One problem I have with short stories is that they are usually sad. Nothing ever really ends well in a short story, so when I find authors who are able to get past the sad short story, I rejoice. Shepard, More...

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Apr 27, 2009

Derek rated it:

One of those very rare short story collections that forced me to close the book in awe and walk around after completing the stories, Jim Shepard's Like You'd Understand, Anyway left me, at times, speechless. You know the feeling - the end of the story rings so perfectly true, and is so perfectly concise and biting, that you need to step away from it just to catch your breath. To steal a phrase, "the type of memories that turn your bones to glass." This book has those in spades.

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Oct 26, 2008

Heather rated it:

This book of short stories takes all the trends of contemporary fiction (premises that involve lots of background research, slang, and dudeliness) and gums them together into a smug, unreadable mess. I managed to finish 'Zero Meter Diving Team', the first story, but I assure you that is only because of my reader's guilt. I was able to make less and less headway into each story that followed. Alternate title for this book: Boring in Space.

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it

Recently nominated for the National Book Award, Jim Shepard's latest collection of short stories struck a chord with reviewers, who couldn't agree on which stories were the best. Though each story is related through first-person testimony, Shepard gives each narrator his or her own voice with its own subtle nuances, and he masterfully sets the characters' internal conflicts at odds with their external predicaments. The characters are convincing despite the incredible dilemmas they face, and the

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Aug 30, 2011

Ron rated it:

I quote a blurb on the dust jacket that nails the unique accomplishment of this collection:

"So varied in tone, theme, voice and setting are these stories that they might've been written by a hydra. A hydra, that is, surfeited with remarkable wit, compassion, and the gift of gab."

Shepard will go anywhere and "anywhen" to tell a story, from the horrors of the Chernobyl disaster, to an abortive exploration of the interior of Australia in the mid 19th century, More...

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Jul 10, 2011

Tripp added it

More historical short fiction from Jim Shepard.

"The Zero Meter Diving Team" is a first person, present tense account (but a present tense account that moves to past tense for most of the story) of Boris Yakovlevich Prushinsky, chief engineer of the Dept. of Nuclear Energy. HIs younger brother, Mikhail, was a turbine engineer working at the Chernobyl reactor on 26 April 1986, when its core melted down. Prushinsky indicts Soviet bureaucracy as well as his own aloofness rega More...

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Apr 10, 2009

Luke rated it:

After reading such praised reviews, a National Book award finalist to boot, and heeding a stong recommendation to, 'buy this book now' I am sadly disappointed. I have a love-hate relationship with short stories to begin with so am prone to being less than wooed when it comes to collections. Shepard is not a bad writer and not necessarily a bad story teller, its just that THESE didn't work. For me. Yes, kudos to him for spanning such a variety of settings and time-stamps in history and charact More...

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Jan 04, 2011

G rated it:

While it didn't have as strong a selection as "Love and Hydrogen", I love the way in which Shepard takes obscure, and not-so-obscure, historical characters and imbues them with a "modern" psychology that they had all along. And the stories set in the present day are equally striking.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 15, 2010

Sandra rated it:

Jim Shepard’s collections of short stories are remarkable, in my opinion. He recently won the Story Prize for Like You’d Undersand, Anyway, one of the most prestigious awards available for short-story collections.

The stories for the most part manage to bridge two camps of ‘short story’ writing – they are both realistic *and* experimental, and, neither. He covers an incredible range – Nazi scientists trekking through Tibet looking for the yeti; middle-aged Aeschylus taking up arms at More...

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Oct 04, 2009

Vicki rated it:

Shepard has a great gift for language. These stories are so wide-ranging that for the first several I was dumbfounded by the breadth of his imagination. As the book progresses, certain themes emerge: all but one of his protagonists are male, with serious father and/or brother issues; all of the adults are isolated by their positions as history-makers (explorers, warriors, cosmonauts, the executioner for all of Paris during the Terrors, you get the idea); all of the children are overburdened, a More...

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Oct 19, 2011

Patrick rated it:

Jim Shepherd’s 2007 short story collection, Like You’d Understand Anyway, was a finalist for the National Book Award and it’s easy to see why. It is a masterly collection of stories that range from heartfelt and painful tales of adolescence (“Proto-Scorpions of the Silurian,” ”Trample the Dead, Hurdle the Weak,” and “Courtesy For Beginners”) to exhaustively realistically researched historical tales of the past (Roman soldiers-“Hadarian’s Wall,” Nazi naturalists chasing Yetis-“Ancestral Legacies More...

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Apr 21, 2010

Brett rated it:

"Like You'd Understand Anyway" - Stories is quite the collection, a smart, witty collection.

Jim Shepard is famous for his short stories and I wanted to be the next person to say that his stories are amazing, I'll go with good and I can say that after reading them, I think Jim Shepard has an incredibly brilliant mind.

My favorites-

The Zero Meter Diving Team
Proto-Scorpions of the Silurian
Trample the Dead, Hurdle the Weak
Ancestral More...

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Jun 24, 2009

Kerfe rated it:

The first story in this collection, "The Zero Meter Diving Team", is so good that it seems inevitable that the remainder of the stories would be a bit of a letdown. Based on actual historical events (in this case Chernobyl), the story provides a haunting juxtaposition to the facts by exploring the actions and thoughts of a family, participants in the explosion/clean-up/cover-up, that both predate and transcend the particular moment in time.

Many of the other stories follow More...

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Dec 18, 2008

Suzanne rated it:

This book of short stories was all over the place, both in terms of location and time periods- Tibet, ancient Greece, Alaska, Australia. It was a bit jarring as I really had to reprogram myself between each story. The story I best liked was about exploring Australia's desert region- without enough water and ignoring the advice of aborigines, of course that expedition was doomed. The stories all seemed to have a theme of letting people down, esp. brothers vs brothers and fathers vs sons. The last More...

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Jan 05, 2009

Jesse rated it:

Let me say right now, the writing is good.

It doesn't feel forced or too obvious. I can imagine all the minute word Mr. Shepard has poured into his characters and their stories, his feelings for them.

But that's my problem. I wasn't fully able to invest myself into the characters. The stories were good but felt too short for me; like I didn't have time to get to know the people who were telling us about their lives. And I think all this comes from the fact that I haven't re More...

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Jan 05, 2012

Ann rated it:

Jim Shepard is an incredible writer. He is also an incredibly intelligent person who must spend a great deal of time researching topics that interest him. Either that, or he's a knowledge sponge. The amount of detail that he includes in his stories -- each of which describe vastly different worlds -- can be daunting at times. These are not stories to be read quickly; nor do they make for quick or breezy reading. But if you want to escape into a world about which you have no knowledge, Shepard ma More...

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Oct 22, 2009

Penny rated it:

Shepard has made me hooked on short stories. In this volume, each story is based on a bizarre scenario often grounded in historical fact (or at least an interesting historical setting). He writes about an executioner and his family during the French Revolution, Russian cosmonauts, and a Roman soldier patrolling Hadrien's Wall, to name a few. Each story has a markedly different voice. I couldn't believe they were all written by the same person. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and plan to read More...

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Jul 21, 2009

Anthony rated it:

I first read Shepard's amazing story on Texas high-school football "Trample the Dead, Hurdle the Weak" and it was all blood and spit and fear. The other stories in the collection share the same clean melodious writing (and either daddy or older brother issues) but span a vast imaginative range - a Soviet nuclear bureaucrat after Chernobyl, a German scientist sent by Himmler to Tibet to find the yeti; the 45-year-old Aeschylus marching with his brother toward the battle of Marathon, afr More...

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Nov 04, 2009

Emily rated it:

The two pages of acknowledgments say it all: "Without crucial contributions from the following sources, many of the stories in this book would not have existed, or would have existed in a much paltrier form." Research, research, research. Written for the most part in bald, utilitarian prose and a pretty uniform first-person, the stories tend to conclude with the aesthetic risks they could have taken to begin with ("My Aeschylus"; "Sans Farine"), and illustrate jus More...

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Aug 09, 2010

Doug rated it:

Take these eleven stories, deep dives into an enormously wide range of landscape and time, slowly. Let them curl around a bit on your brain before you set off for the next one and on the chance you're not connecting with one, give it time, you will get hooked and you will learn something about a time or place you didn't know before, I guarantee, and you will learn about these things through an empathy you perhaps didn't know you had…but Jim Shepard had a hunch you did. Spend time with a scribe o More...

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Jun 08, 2011

Erin rated it:

Jim Shepard's book of short stories is meticulously researched and Shepard's interest in the obscure (both in subject, situation, and psychology) makes the book a cohesive whole. But while I certainly enjoyed reading each of the stories (my favorites: "The Zero Meter Diving Team," "The First South Central Australian Expedition," and "Sans Farine," which all had historical subjects), I was somewhat skeptical of what seemed to be a pervasive anachronism of psychology, More...

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