Item: Bobcat & Other Stories
Rating: 3.00
Author: leahrosereads

by Rebecca Lee

At turns heartbreaking and wise, tender and wry, Bobcat and Other Stories establishes Rebecca Lee as one of the most powerful and original voices in Canadian literature.

A university student on her summer abroad is offered the unusual task of arranging a friend's marriage. Secret infidelities and one guest's dubious bobcat-related injury propel a Manhattan dinner party to its unexpected conclusion. Students at an elite architecture retreat seek the wisdom of their revered mentor but end up learning more about themselves and one another than about their shared craft.

In these acutely observed and scaldingly honest stories Lee gives us characters who are complex and flawed, cracking open their fragile beliefs and exposing the paradoxes that lie within their romantic and intellectual pursuits. Whether they're in the countryside of the American Midwest, on a dusty prairie road in Saskatchewan, or among the skyscrapers and voluptuous hills of Hong Kong, the terrain is never as difficult to navigate as their own histories and desires.

I never quite know how to rate/review short stories.

Rebecca Lee did a decent job with each of these stories, and I wish I cold have enjoyed them all. However, I really only enjoyed Bobcat, Min, and Fialta, or 3/7 of the stories in this collection. The other stories, although well written, I just felt no connection with. The characters fell flat to me, and I just didn't care all that much about their stories.

Maybe if they were longer, if the characters were given more of a chance to develop, I'd be more invested in their situations, but, I don't think that's the point of this collection in general.

Each story delved into relationships in different ways, and I felt that each story was realistic in that sense. I just didn't like certain stories.

Bobcat & Other Stories

by Rebecca Lee

Reviewed by leahrosereads on Apr 22, 2014

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