Love and Hydrogen: New and Selected Stories

by Jim Shepard

Book Overview

I've been a problem baby, a lousy son, a distant brother, an off-putting neighbor, a piss-poor student, a worrisome seatmate, an unreliable employee, a bewildering lover, a frustrating confidante and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400033497
• ISBN13: 9781400033492
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A 13-year-old's sensibility (this is a good thing)

Many of these are the kind of stories that you wish you could've written when you were 13 years old, but couldn't possibly have known how. What's amazing is that Shepard has found a way to retained the sensibility of puberty in so many of these great stories--like about the Creature From the Black Lagoon, or the kid who locks out the nuns, or the risk-taking dad, or even about the rich girl who goes to spend a night at the poor girls house. There are others, too. Great political satire on John Ashcroft, and the title story is absolutely incredible, telling a story of gay lovers working as staff aboard the Hindenburg. That very idea idea is genius, and the way it unfolds, well, read and find out for yourself. Interestingly, despite my five-star review, there were two stories that I absolutely hated. Hated!! This makes sense to me, though, since Shepard is trying hard to push some boundaries. Every great inventor must fail, and it is those failures that generate genius.

It's spelled "Entwistle"!

....No "H"! I'll save my other comments for when I read the book, but as a loyal Who fan I had to point out the litte mistake in the Booklist review. I can't wait to read this book because I am in awe of those who can skillfully write in multiple narratives, and this book has intriguing characters. Hopefully the author spells "Entwistle" correctly. :)

We have become the inexplicable

Reading Jim Shepard's `Love and Hydrogen' right after Adam Haslett's overwrought and over-rated `You Are Not a Stranger Here' was what I needed to re-affirm my faith in short fiction as an art form. As a reader I want a fulfillment of what fiction promises: a mimesis; that the author will try to inhabit other lives and situations and render them in a way that produces something novel for me. I don't need self-affirmation or a lesson. I want a story. And in a short story collection I want stories. Many times, such as in Haslett's book, the situations are so repetitive that you suspect that the author is rendering his own life through these stories, that self-indulgence and egotism over-ride art or any interest in art. Sorry for writing of my opinion of Haslett's work, but it brought into stark contrast why I liked this collection so much more. Shepard's work is most notable for its incredible diversity of setting, voice and theme: a teen-age girl's first person account of a friendship strained by class division (Spending the Night With the Poor), the disaffections and fascination of a Yugoslav footballer in progressive 1960's Holland (Ajax is All About Attack), the thrill and resignation of a World War II German test pilot (Climb Aboard the Mighty Flea) are just a sample. He can approach a story as a straight ahead narrative (The Mortality of Parents) or as an ironic romp(The Creature from the Black Lagoon) and yet he always seems to find his way to the dark heart of the story. He is at his best when he takes on narratives or personae that we think we know and produces something startlingly fresh: `We Won't Get Fooled Again' a brief history of The Who from the eyes of their most enigmatic member, bassist John Entwhistle, is hilarious and heart-rending. Nor is Shepard ideologically bound; in his exceptional story `John Ashcroft: More Important Things Than Me' he paints a self-portrait of the man that is at once more generous and chilling than any number of partisan biographies could hope to accomplish. Characters who would be no more than walk-ons or caricatures in another writer's story take centre-stage with Shepard, and you get the feeling that no character is automatically invested with more insight or dignity than any other. In all, it is a refreshing approach and one that declares a fuller, more humanistic artistic vision than ninety percent of the reheated autobiographies that masquerade as fiction today. The only weak point I found in the collection was `Alicia and Emmet with the 17th Lancers at Balaclava' where the interweaving narratives felt somewhat strained. It is a minor drawback, like a complaint about the scuff-marks on Fred Astaire's floor. At first this incredible array of voices and settings may seem like a self-conscious tour de force, that the author is trying to keep you on your heels with off-speed pitches because he doesn't have any real `stuff', but the writing is so good and the voice so authentic that the novelty o

John Ashcroft & the creature from the black lagoon

This is the best short fiction collection I've read in several years. Shepard's stories are both economical and lean--there isn't much here that's over 20 pages long, but Shepard packs into those 20 pages a complexity of theme and character that most writers can't approach even at novella length. It is a dizzying collection, by turns violent, funny, and wrenchingly sad. Shepard writes in a dazzling array of voices, handling each with effortless authority. He is particularly good at adolescents (see also the amazing Project X), but these stories also give voice to a Yugoslav football player, a German test pilot, John Entwhistle, John Ashcroft, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Superb.