Valentine

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.

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.