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SUMMARY:Jim Shepard at Harvard Book Store
DESCRIPTION:Harvard Book Store welcomes Jim Shepard—award-winning author of eight novels and six story collections\, including The Book of Aron and Like You’d Understand\, Anyway—for a discussion of his new story collection\, The Queen of Bad Influences. He will be joined in conversation by Margot Livesey—author of ten novels\, including the New York Times bestseller The Flight of Gemma Hardy and her most recent novel The Road from Belhaven. \nAbout The Queen of Bad Influences\nTwelve compressed masterworks from this great American writer of catastrophe fiction\, in which lives are upended as much by broken hearts as by collapsing dams\, hideously mismanaged wars\, gargantuan wildfires\, and apocalyptic storms. \nIn Richard Ford’s view\, Jim Shepard’s “talent is so various and canny he can write about seemingly anything and make it thrilling to us\,” and in these stories spanning six centuries we find viscerally evoked worlds as wildly diverse as a mercenary’s corner of 16th century Madrid\, a young apprentice’s pre-Revolutionary Boston\, and Edward Hyde’s London.  With civil engineers and destitute veterans we encounter the devastating 1935 Labor Day hurricane in Florida\, and we read the 1864 letters between Lucy in Boon\, North Carolina (“Three privates are currently sleeping soundly on our porch in their muddy blankets”) and her great love\, William\, on the march in Tennessee (“I can’t write much for it seems we are looking for a fight every minute”)\, while the title story introduces us to the stubborn Constance\, who had “no gift for flirtation” with men\, preferring Minna\, her best friend and “queen of bad influences\,” as their vexed devotion unfolds in part on the liner Lusitania. \nWith irony\, compassion\, and withering humor\, these stories evoke the terrible ease with which cataclysm\, human-engineered or otherwise\, can sweep away all we find most precious\, and expose those limitations we’ve refused to address. At the same time\, Shepard celebrates what is best in us: the love and friendships we sustain\, and the passions and grace we grant one another.
URL:https://harvardsquare.com/event/jim-shepard-at-harvard-book-store/
LOCATION:Harvard Book Store\, 1256 Massachusetts Ave\, Cambridge\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:Author Events
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