"World Party" - A Short Story by Rebecca Lee - From Bobcat and other Stories, 2012)

A while back I read and posted on two short by Rebecca Lee.  I really liked both of these stories, I was able to read them online.  I wanted to read more of her works but I could not find any more of her work online.  I hesitate to buy collection and anthologies of short stories as I am kindly given way more collections than can ever read and I keep getting more.  I suppose I could turn the offers of free books down but I like free books to much to do that and any book could be a masterwork.  I do look at every book I am given and I post on what works for me and The Reading Life. 

Recently I found that Rebecca Lee's collection Bobcat and other Stories was marked down from $10.95 to $1.95.  I have learned these mark downs are often short term so I bought the book.  I will be reading and perhaps posting on the stories in the collection I have not yet read.  

Lee writes about educated urban often academically employed people.  Those stories I have so far read center on women going through relationship turmoils and  dealing with issues arising from a divorce. Her wonderful portrayal of the reading habits of the peop,e in her stories, the role of the works they love in their lives is one of my favorite things about her work. 

I loved the opening segment of "World Party", set in a Canadian university, in which the narrator, a female professor of the classics, talks about teaching Ovid.  It for sure made me wanted to read him.  Much of the story is devoted to university politics.  There is often a certain otherworldliness to academics, caught up in sometimes petty seeming issues.  The big issue on the agenda is a protest group threatening a hunger strike over the investment policies of the university. Combined with this is a plot involving World Day at her seven year old son's school. 

I enjoyed this story a lot just like I did her other works. 

Mel u

"Settlers" - A Short Story by Rebecca Lee - From Bobcat and other Stories (2013)

My Posts on the Short Stories of Rebecca Lee

"This old house, belonging to my friends Lesley and Andy, had been built in 1904 in a neighborhood that pretended it was on solid ground—old, Victorian homes with pillars and porticoes—but if you stepped through the screen door into the garden out back, you could feel the sand under your feet, and despite Lesley’s beautiful mazes of trees, you could tell the ocean had been here not long ago, and would be again." From "Settlers" by Rebecca Lee

A while back I read and posted on two short by Rebecca Lee.  I really liked both of these stories, I was able to read them online.  I wanted to read more of her works but I could not find any more of her work online.  I hesitate to buy collection and anthologies of short stories as I am kindly given way more collections than can ever read and I keep getting more.  I suppose I could turn the offers of free books down but I like free books to much to do that and any book could be a masterwork.  I do look at every book I am given and I post on what works for me and The Reading Life. 

Yesterday I found that Rebecca Lee's collection Bobcat and other Stories was marked down from $10.95 to $1.95.  I have learned these mark downs are often short term so I bought the book.  I will be reading and perhaps posting on the stories in the collection I have not yet read.  

Lee writes about educated urban often academically employed people.  "Settlers" focuses on the relationships of two women, over the course of a few years.  As you can see in the opening paragraph i quoted above, it is about living on shifting sands.  In "Settlers", set in 1998 in New York City, people write essays  about the rock opera Tommy and are experts on Vietsmese cooking.  The dissect the personalities of all those they knew.  Lee conveys a great deal in a few pages. 

I read this story twice and greatly enjoyed it.  

Mel u

"Statland" by Rebecca Lee (2013, included in New American Short Stories edited by Ben Marcus)

My Posts on Rebecca Lee

In 2013 I read and posted on two wonderful short stories by Rebecca Lee, from her debut collection, Bobcat and other Stories.  I was recently kindly given a D R C of a forthcoming collection of short stories edited by Ben Marcus, New American Short Stories and was very pleased to see a story by Rebecca Lee was included.  I will be posting, I hope, on a number of the stories from the collection and will just say now that I predict it will be very well received for its mix of big name writers combined with exciting emergers.  

The only way to read "Shatland" is, as far as I know, in one of the two anthologies in which it is included.  Like both of her prior stories I read, it deals with, in part, an academic family. This one centers on the daughter. Her parents are worried about her as she has seemed depressed lately.  The father has her visit a professor of child psychology.  The girl is troubled because she thinks, rightly, that her father is having an affair.  The counseling session is an odd one but interesting. We flash ahead twenty years. The woman is now working as a soil scientist.  She has a Romanian boyfriend, a geologist who works with her father.  She begins to suspect that he has a wife and kids back in Romania.  I will leave the rest of the very intriquining plot untold.  

I greatly enjoyed this story.  I am looking forward to reading all the stories in New American Short Stories edited by Ben Marcus.

Mel u

"Bobcat" by Rebecca Lee. (From Bobcat and Other Stories, 2012)

author bio (from web page of Penguin)

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.

"Bobcat" is the title story in Rebecca Lee's highly regarded short story collection, Bobcat and Other Stories.  I have previously posted on her very good short story, "On the Shores of the Vistula", from the collection.  Both of these stories center on very educated, cultivated people with academic backgrounds. 

"Bobcat" is set at the house party of affluent cultured Manhattan couple.  The wife is an attorney.  Her biggest case now involves a Hmong tribal man living in New York City.  His tradition rejects modern medicine as witchcraft.   He refused to allow his critically ill young daughter to receive Western medical care and she died as a result.  She and her partner are trying to keep him out of prison.  

The story deals a lot with how people try to project themselves versus how we think they do.  It also makes a lot of subtle points about relationships.  Three of the people at the party have written books, one about a bobcat attack.   It was a lot of fun to read about the pre-party preparations and the food sounds great. I liked this story a lot.  I admit I liked "On the Shores of the Vistula" a little bit more.

"The Banks of the Vistula" by Rebecca Lee (1997).

read the story here

The Guardian this week named Bobcat and Other Stories by Rebecca Lee as their pick for a top short story book of 2013.   I was very glad to find a link to one of the stories in the collection on the public web page of The Atlantic.  

author bio (from web page of Penguin)

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.

My main purpose in this post is to let my readers know that one of Rebecca Lee's short stories can be read online.  "The Banks of Vistula" is set in a university.   A young female college student is taking a challenging class in psycholinguistics.  The professor is from Poland.  His background is a bit mysterious or even malevolent as he served as an officer in the Soviet Army when the occupied Poland.  The student finds and obscure book in the library, one know one has checked out in decades.  She copies a chapter nearly word for word and turns it in as her work.   The professor is convinced it is plagiarism and he calls her into the office.  She tells him it is her work but she did talk it over with her roommate.  The professor then wants to meet the roommate.  There are lots of great twists and turns in this story.  It gives us a great feel for academic life and its conflicts.   

I really liked this story and hope to read more of her work.

Mel u