Bobcat & Other Stories

‘Bobcat and Other Stories is nothing short of brilliant. Rebecca Lee writes with the unflinching, cumulatively devastating precision of Chekhov and Munro, peeling back layer after layer of illusion until we’re left with the truth of ourselves … This extraordinary story collection is sure to confirm its author as one of the best writers of her generation.’ * Ben Fountain, author of Billy Flynn’s Long Halftime Walk *
‘Mesmirisingly strange…Full of shivers and frissions…highly imaginative stories…[Lee’s] eccentric eloquence…makes Bobcat so potent and powerful.’ * New York Times *
‘In all these stories, confused, sometimes misdirected men and women struggle to figure out their places in the world, stumble into often unhappy situations and sometimes, to their great misfortune, get exactly what they were hoping for…Lee captures little pieces of all of us and she does it in language so delicate and precise that you’ll re-read passages for the joy of it. ’ * Star Tribune *
‘Slim, sly and brilliant.’ * Oprah.com *
‘Lee writes with an unflinching eye toward the darkest and saddest aspects of life, often finding humor where least expected. This fresh, provocative collection, peerless in its vehement elucidation of contemporary foibles, is not to be missed. ’ * Publisher’s Weekly *
‘This is a potent, quietly daring and sturdily imagined collection, rich with a subtlety in short supply in our current short-fiction landscape, where writers seem to settle for lobbing verbal grenades in the reader’s general direction. In stories like “Bobcat” and “Fialta,” there is the real sense of significance, as though a whole subway system’s worth of meaning is roaring beneath the text, ready to whisk the reader anywhere they need to go.’ * National Post *
‘Make some room in your tote bag for this [book] by a prodigiously talented writer, Rebecca Lee. Her work is at once effortless and exacting, sophisticated and ribald.’ * Denver Post *
‘Rebecca Lee makes an enormous impression with her new collection of stories. No less than Jonathan Franzen has praised her work as “beautiful and insane and unlike any other” and indeed it proves witty and wise on every page. Lee has a keen ear for natural dialogue, and her tales hinge on such fruitful premises and sympathetic characters that each one could easily grow into much more than a short story.’ * The Thousands *
’[Lee] offers a powerful collection that makes us look within while acutely describing everyday situations.’ * West Australian *
’[Lee’s] writing and her view of life site between John Updike and Grace Paley, and her observations have a sharp-eyed gentleness.’ * Sydney Morning Herald/Age *
‘Genius’ * Good Reading *
‘While her stories vary wildly in plot, they’re all sharp and funny, with enchanting characters.’ * North and South *

Rebecca Lee is the author of the critically acclaimed novel The City Is a Rising Tide and the short story collection Bobcat and Other Stories. She has been published in The Atlantic and Zoetrope, and in 2001 she received a National Magazine Award for her short fiction. Originally from Saskatchewan, Lee is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is now a professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

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