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A review by ridgewaygirl
Bobcat & Other Stories by Rebecca Lee
4.0
He would turn his moony, moody eye on a sketch and see things I had never imagined -- sunlit pools, fragrant winding gardens, gathering parties, cascading staircases. He would see people living out their lives. He would see life on earth. I would emerge from these sessions with him wanting desperately to run and run to catch up with his idea of what I might do, and in this way he created within me an ambition that would long outlast our association.
This is a collection of seven short stories by Rebecca Lee. Mostly set in the world of academia, the stories are varied in topic; in Bobcat a New York dinner party attended by a few writers and their editor becomes an observation of one marriage, while also foreshadowing another's demise, while The Banks of the Vistula involves a college freshman dealing with the repercussions of an act of plagiarism.
She smiled at me and then walked off. And I turned to walk back to my room, slightly horrified at myself. Go ahead, I repeated to myself. Oh, hey, go ahead. This is the whole problem with words. There is so little surface area to reveal whom you might be underneath, how expansive and warm, how casual, how easygoing, how cool, and so it all comes out a little pathetic and awkward and choked.
What differentiates this from any other short story collection is the quality of the writing. Lee writes beautifully, with well-crafted sentences that create an atmosphere in each story. At their best, short stories contain all the depth and color of a novel, distilled down into a perfect few pages, and Lee's short stories are very good at this. She's a short story writer for fans of that medium and I look forward to reading her next collection.
If you looked carefully, he was a wonderful man. He played the harmonica, he had a beard, he was ten years older than me, he was a settled man, and smart and humble, you could trust him never to have an affair or even leave the house too much.
This is a collection of seven short stories by Rebecca Lee. Mostly set in the world of academia, the stories are varied in topic; in Bobcat a New York dinner party attended by a few writers and their editor becomes an observation of one marriage, while also foreshadowing another's demise, while The Banks of the Vistula involves a college freshman dealing with the repercussions of an act of plagiarism.
She smiled at me and then walked off. And I turned to walk back to my room, slightly horrified at myself. Go ahead, I repeated to myself. Oh, hey, go ahead. This is the whole problem with words. There is so little surface area to reveal whom you might be underneath, how expansive and warm, how casual, how easygoing, how cool, and so it all comes out a little pathetic and awkward and choked.
What differentiates this from any other short story collection is the quality of the writing. Lee writes beautifully, with well-crafted sentences that create an atmosphere in each story. At their best, short stories contain all the depth and color of a novel, distilled down into a perfect few pages, and Lee's short stories are very good at this. She's a short story writer for fans of that medium and I look forward to reading her next collection.
If you looked carefully, he was a wonderful man. He played the harmonica, he had a beard, he was ten years older than me, he was a settled man, and smart and humble, you could trust him never to have an affair or even leave the house too much.