“Shepard’s unapologetically flawed characters make this collection an honest portrayal of womanhood,” Ms. Magazine (Read more here)
Booklist review for Kiss Me Someone
After several novels, Shepard (The Celestials, 2013) offers her first short-story collection. Her mostly female characters run the gamut from the quintessential “mean girl” cliques in “Popular Girls” to the woman, married for 58 years to a man now suffering from dementia, who is “worn out by the gap between what she’d hoped for and what she’d gotten.” Each character, including the Chinese American girl forced by her self-obsessed mother to spend a summer with her grandmother in Szechuan, and the young woman suffering six miscarriages, only to lose the seventh baby a mere eight days before her due date, earns our sympathy or at least our empathy. Shepard is so perceptive, we feel as if we are part of the scene ourselves, such as when the mother of the stillborn baby develops the pictures she took just after her birth, watching in the darkroom as her daughter seems to come to life. These stories, and the characters that inhabit them, are so vivid, they will surely stay with readers for a good long while.
— Deborah Donovan for Booklist
I like the way Adam Morgan thinks…
In the Chicago Review of Books, Adam Morgan tells us what to read in September.
“The Mothers” by Karen Shepard on lithub.com
Lithub.com is running one of the stories from KISS ME SOMEONE today. Get a glimpse here:
“The Mothers”
Karen Shepard’s latest essay on Buzzfeed
My odd intimacy with my stepson’s mother, my husband’s ex-wife, the woman I raised a child with.
Happy Pub Day, Jim Shepard!
Jim Shepard speaks the truth:
Reviews for Kiss Me Someone
“In this captivating collection of stories, Karen Shepard turns her ever-insightful eye on women, and in her gaze is both love and a startling clarity. Readers of all kinds will find much to relish in this voice–from its storytelling surprises to the sharp observations it extends, over and over, to us on the other side of the page.”
–Aimee Bender
“There is such a wondrous variety in these highly accomplished stories. They are rich with invention, with acute (sometimes alarming) awareness, dazzling insight, and pure, word virtuosity.”
–Richard Ford
“Women bear the dark consequences of infidelity, lies, and other betrayals.”
–Kirkus (Read more here)
“This concise, disturbing collection by Shepard (The Celestials) covers several decades of the author’s work, often focusing on troubling experiences of women in the northeastern United States.”
–Publisher’s Weekly (Read more here)
“At first glance, the women of Karen Shepard’s Kiss Me Someone seem linked by a sisterhood of the execrable.”
–The Arkansas International (Read more here)
BuzzFeed’s list of “28 Exciting Books You Need to Read This Fall,” (Read more here)
Book Riot‘s Make it Quick:14 Upcoming Short Story Collections to Watch For (Read more here)
“These stories, and the characters that inhabit them, are so vivid, they will surely stay with readers for a good long while,”
-Booklist (Read more here)
“Shepard’s unapologetically flawed characters make this collection an honest portrayal of womanhood,”
-Ms. Magazine (Read more here)
“Shepard’s writing is breathtaking in its ability to capture minor but revelatory personal insights. With her crisp prose and sharp observations, she views characters with devastating and unflinching clarity.”
– Shelf Awareness for Readers (Read more here)
“When I closed this brash and unapologetic collection, I re-opened it to start again from the beginning.”
– Read It Forward
“Kiss Me Someone cries the inimitable Karen Shepard.”
-Vanity Fair (Read more here)
“She is unflinching in her depictions of self-destructive choices and betrayal as well as friendship and love.”
-O Magazine (Read more here)