Customer Reviews

Valentine

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Seriously. Perfect title: I bought it for my girlfriend; she loved it so much she made me read it. The prose is so erotic, well, it sparked up our relationship a bit (like "91/2 Weeks"). Shepard's knack for telling detail and precise insight combine to provide an experience of both breathtaking description and emotional impact. This guy writes like a demon and you should read him ASAP.

A beautifully written little book about love and the illusion of love. Shepard's lyrical yet emotionally precise prose illuminates the mysterious process of the weathers of the heart by choosing to isolate his lovers in a town itself isolated by hurricane whose reality is in question. Is it all a dream, a story the narrator is telling to a woman for whom he longs, or an actual record of a moment in "a serial affair?" Whatever the case, VALENTINE reads like the essence of a love affair, the distillation of a dream. Its intensity and luminous clarity is obviously the product of a man in love--a very talented man named Lucius Shepard.

It's hard to easily classify this title: part novel, part fantasy, is this story of romance and love lost in Florida, where a hurricane brings an unusual reunion with a lost love. A series of strange circumstances involves them in frightening possibilities in this unusual story.

What a revelation! Equal parts wit, heart and a sure-handed prose of both dazzling elegance and muscle. This is what we talk about when we talk about love. A must-buy book that is like nothing I've read before. Spread the word. Lucius Shepard joins Russell Banks, Alice Munro, and Jane Anne Phillips at the event horizon of American letters.

Shepard is a master of the human heart. He knows it's rhythms and movements. While others deal in vast unatainable panoramas he delves into the human soul. Valentine is a story of two lonely people, former lovers brought togeher again by a hurricane, or fate's whimsy. It tells of their desperate coupling, pieces of a jigsaw puzzle trying to fit together, physically attaining their goal but spiritually unable to make the final commitment. Call them Russell and Kay, call them who you will. Making decisions and keeping commitments seems to be Shepard's theme. Shepard has been thought of as a genre writer far too long. With Valentine he has entered the mainstream.

Wow. Shepard's short, electrifying tale is sort of a Bridges of Madison County for people with a brain: sexy and smart, it's a tale of obsessive passion...a journalist on assignment in Florida runs into a former lover, now married; and ka-boom! they're at it...if you've ever been intensely in love with someone, this book must speak to you. It's graphic, but not pornographic; Shepard writes like a man in love. Hard to imagine it's not taken from life... It's like a chronicle of a dream -- and so beautifully done.

The guy who didn't like this book much writes as if he had some knowledge of Shepard and his work...but he gets most of it wrong.

Shepard has never been just an SF writer -- dark fantasy, horror, fantasy, magic realism, mainstream and some sf thrown in for good measure, sure, but not just SF.

Also, the idea that Shepard might have been in retirement is plain laughable. But, as the reviewer only appears to be familiar with Life During Wartime and The Golden, I reckon he missed the fifteen years of short fiction by Shepard across magazines and anthologies and in Shepard's own collections. Read a little more.

Shepard is also not in his 60s -- author birthdates are easy to find on the web. Math is harder, I admit, but check your arithmetic.

As for the book, I thought it was stunning. As usual Shepard's prose is poetic and evocative. I can't think of too many other writers working today who have his insight into, and his ability to illumine, basic human emotions. The book isn't sentimental or maudlin as its story might have been in the hands of a lesser writer, instead, it's painful emotional content is earned.

Now, it is true that there are no spaceships (well, maybe not), no ray guns, no cool weapons, no exploding heads. What there is is the story of a man and a woman and a set of circumstances they can't overcome however deeply they love one another. That's enough for me.

Shepard is a fantasist in the sense that Marquez is. He fully explores his characters by projecting the subconscious dimension of their conflicts onto the setting. VALENTINE concerns a rare, magical alignment of subconscious forces -- represented by the hurricane and other supernatural phenomena -- and two people's thoughtful exploration of their relationship. In failing to note the story's carefully layered fantasy elements, the PUBLISHERS WEEKLY reviewer seems to have missed its third dimension: an up-to-date dramatization of erotic love on the mythic level.

A powerful book, though it owes an obvious debt to Tony Daniel's seminal masterwork, "Canoe". Where Daniel guides, Shepard follows.

I loved it. This is my all time favorit book right now. It is so exciting to see Lucuis back writing. I didn't like his soap opera vampire story, or his second time round Bill Gibson stuff, but the Valentine really did it for me.

Bravo!