We’re not going to call Jim Shepard a “writer’s writer,” because the novelist, whose Project X fictionalized Columbine better than any other treatment, knows more about pacing and primal emotions than almost any best-selling author out there. His new stories gave us joyful dizzy spells, painting the inner thoughts of characters from a Roman centurion to a pair of Texan football players—most in first-person narratives as perfectly tuned as the best work of Michael Chabon and David Mitchell.
Like You’d Understand, Anyway
Jim Shepard; Knopf; $23.