Batting Against Castro: Stories

Jim Shepard's collection here is a real treat. It's a must read, an innovative style with a fluid rhythm and enthralling nostalgia. Shepard has shown what a promising author he is with Nosferatu, and Battling Against Castro ups the ante.

Great stories. Few writers would dare to rewrite Salinger's "Just Before the War with the Eskimos" in a white trash landscape and Roth's "The Conversion of the Jews" in a catholic school. But Shepard did it. And landed on his feet. Amazing! Read this and follow with the novel "Nosferatu" (a fragment included here). "Batting Against Castro" is all that a short-stories collection should be: a kaleidoscope vision of the world as we don't know it and, also, an intimate invitation to visit a writer's mind. A rare privilege.R.S.V.P. NOW!

If you're as sick as I am of cookie-cutter, writer's program writing, you should check out this fine collection of stories. Divided into two sections, "Strangers" and "Family," it manages to avoid every cliche going in contemporary American fiction. Shepard goes straight into the character, and if you don't like it, that's your problem. Quick example: "Who We Are, What We're Doing," in which you get a speed rap from a gung-ho flyboy who totally digs killing other people from his over-teched fighter plane. For three pages, you're there, like it or not. That's "Strangers" for you, but the "Family" is no less hard-edged. I usually burn out on a book of short stories after a couple, and lay it down to come back to later. Not with "Batting Against Castro." Shepard's a winner. -- Ed Ward