"Nancy Lee gives us beautifully penned, intensely moving stories in this debut collection. . . [
Dead Girls] does what the best art does: It makes you see in revelatory bursts how everything is connected, and that this collective human linkage of experience, of cause and effect and responsibility, is the wonder and tragedy of our condition. . . .You'll weep at these tales, you'll feel the rise of anger and despair, you may even want to close the book and do something to recover yourself--in fact, I'd recommend it. Incremental reading enhances the writing's power. I also discovered that closing the book had no similarity to shutting off the TV, nor did going back to it have anything to do with prurience, with that ambivalent draw to the horrific. If I set the book aside to recover hope, each time I came back to find my own inviolable humanity. What a gift is Nancy Lee. No review can tell you."
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The Globe and Mail"Nancy Lee pulls no punches in her debut story collection. In precise sentences she mirrors the lurid headlines in the nightly news: missing girls, presumed dead, lost children whose stories litter the fringes of our consciousness. . .Lee is a pure and fearless writer."
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Toronto Star"
Dead Girls. . . is completely free of the tentativeness or uncertainty shown by so many first-time authors. A loosely connected collection of short stories,
Dead Girls is among the strongest fictional debuts in recent memory and heralds the arrival of a bold new voice in Canadian writing. . . .[A] disturbing, nervy, and ultimately thrilling debut."
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Quill & Quire (
starred review)
“Assured and immensely readable stories.”
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The Observer (UK)
"In a clean, impeccable style, Nancy Lee brings to light what too often comes to lie at the core of love. These are moving and gripping stories--harsh, yet delivered with delicacy and compassion. They are from a young, new writer of conspicuous talent. Read them--and you will wake from a slumber you did not know you were in."
-Yann Martel, author of
Life of Pi and
Self“Lee uses words with forensic compassion, her stories shivery, thrilling pieces of emotional noir. An unusually intelligent debut.”
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Metro (UK)
"If Nancy Lee makes the right decisions--and writes a novel as good as her stories--she will be huge. Lee. . .has written a book that has an unforgettable sense of urgency. Remember the name."
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NOW Magazine"Nancy Lee's prose is unflinchingly beautiful. Her narratives, seemingly slight, resound in the mind weeks and months after they are read."
-Tobias Hill, author of
The Cryptographer and Underground"The writing is so subtle and understated and delicate. . .It’s flawless; she’s in complete command, knows exactly what she wants to say and how precisely to say it. Some of the best short stories I’ve read in years."
-Niall Griffiths, author of
Sheepshagger and Kelly and Victor"Lee's stories can be disturbing, yet they are redeemed by a humaneness in her writing, a sympathetically imagined depiction of hope and despair."
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Maclean's"Brilliantly and thrillingly written. . . .While
Dead Girls is indeed dark, it is written with compassion and lightning flashes of humour."
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The Herald (UK)
