Bobcat and Other Stories

Bobcat and Other Stories by Rebecca Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I loved this collection of short stories. Every one of them felt like a little novel. The writing was fantastic and the characters deeply satisfying. Most of these stories explore the idea that we know things before we know them, about love and betrayal, about marriage and parenting. Deeply engrossing and thoughtful, there are too few stories in this collection, and I hope to see another collection soon.

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The bird, which was a bronze talismanic centerpiece, golden and thriving, is revealed as a collection of crazy bones.

“This is the power of the sentence,” he said. “It acts out this drama of control and subversion. The noun always stands for what is, the status quo, and the verb for what might be, the ideal.”

I had read that the ability to use language and the ability to tame fire arose from the same warm, shimmering pool of genes, since in nature they did not appear one without the other.

The line people draw between the things they consider this and the things they consider that is the perimeter of their sphere of intimacy. You see? Everything inside is this; everything inside is close, is intimate. Since you pointed at the cream and it is farther from you than I am, ‘this’ suggests that I am among the things you consider close to you. I’m flattered,” he said, and handed me the creamer, which was, like him, sweating. What an idea—that with a few words you could catch another person in a little grammatical clutch, arrange the objects of the world such that they bordered the two of you.

language did not describe events, it handled them, as a hand handles an object, and that in this way language made the world happen under its supervision.

These were extremely wealthy people, and money moved through the room as if it were oxygen, or time—in such abundance it was no longer visible.

“Only a man who hates his privilege can be trusted with it.”

"Well, I guess I mean romantic in the large sense, you know.The threshold is the moment one steps inside, out of the cold, and feels oneself treasured on a human scale.”

where women are frequently turned into heifers when the men can no longer live with them, or without them.”

Another cow shuddered awake beside me and looked up at me, half in sympathy, half in resignation to all my shortcomings, which is the very look cows always give, which is their whole take on the world.

Somehow Lesley had found the rabbit hole into real life, while I had continued on this other precarious path—single and free and mostly what I wanted, but still, there wasn’t any real food, it seemed, no soups or stews or casseroles, except for the two or three nights a month when I came to dinner here.