Bobcat and Other Stories

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, June 2013: How do you judge a short story collection? By its consistency? How often you laugh? Or by the number of times it breaks your heart? With Bobcat and Other Stories, the answer to the last question is seven, which is the number of stories that make up Rebecca Lee's first short story collection (and hopefully far from her last). The title story is perhaps the best example of what Lee does best. An innocuous dinner party reveals to the narrator that her marriage is disintegrating (or were those signs always there?). She says her honeymoon "haunted our marriage a little, mostly because it was a little sad for reasons I couldn't comprehend and felt I shouldn't disturb." Bobcat is a tricky balancing act. Lee has a knack for nuance, but never lets her subtlety dull the emotional punch. Even as her characters wrestle with tragic internal dilemmas, there's a distinct sense of humor that perseveres throughout. Bobcat and Other Stories is one of the strongest collections I've read in recent years. --Kevin Nguyen