Valentine: A Novel - Softcover

Shepard, Lucius

3.34

59 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 156858251X ISBN 13: 9781568582511

Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2003

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In South Florida, a journalist is stranded in the coastal town of Piersall. This secluded landscape hosts an unlikely encounter with a past love and the beginning of a chain of events that will link the estranged lovers. Shepard investigates the nature of their love and the elusive, alienating force that separated them in the past, despite their seemingly boundless passion. Here is an erotic valentine of insatiable longing and hope. “[Lucius Shepard] Brings to mind Graham Greene, Robert Stone, and Ward Just.” -- Wall Street Journal

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From Publishers Weekly:

A hurricane alert strands a pair of lovers in a small Florida town, leading to a steamy erotic interlude in which Shepard (The Jaguar Hunter) traces the evolution of the couple's passionate affair as well as their problematic future together. Russell is a freelance journalist on assignment in Florida who runs into Kay Rossman, a beautiful, married college professor with whom he's been having an intense, off-again-on-again affair for some time. In between bouts of passion, some brief and rather vague references are made to Rossman's difficult marriage; her husband is a controlling man whom she feels compelled to stay with out of loyalty. Her divided allegiances cause considerable tension with Russell, and Shepard delineates the arc of their deep-seated love by tracing their various passionate encounters until the moment finally comes when they must leave one another. The story closes with some intense last-minute negotiations in which Russell agrees to move to Los Angeles to be close to Rossman and support her when she leaves her husband; a couple of tepid plot twists round out the final resolution. Shepard is an artful, accomplished writer who certainly knows his way around an erotically charged love scene, but he fails to flesh out the plot with anything other than the constant coupling of his two lovers. The result is an arousing but one-dimensional novel by a writer who has the talent to craft a far more complete book.

From Booklist:

Cast as a love letter from a man to his married lover, Shepard's novel is haunting and magical. When a well-traveled journalist and his former lover are stranded in a small town in South Florida because of a hurricane, they fall in love all over again. Although they have been lovers off and on since college, neither the man nor his girlfriend has ever really taken the time to know the other completely--until now. When the hurricane recedes, and they go back to their separate lives, they find that their recent time together has created a bond they can no longer ignore. Highly reminiscent of the feminist classic The Awakening by Kate Chopin (1899), Valentine is erotic and despairing in tone as it traces the transformation of lust into something deeper. Shepard's protagonist intersperses the passionate entreaties of a man in love with philosophical musings on memory, desire, chaos, synchronicity, fate, and the way that different stories play out in our lives. Bonnie Johnston
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