I am always looking for a new short story writer to try out. I came across Rick Bass as highly recommended by several GR friends. This was my first collection of his stories. I had several different reactions to them. Certainly one of those reactions was enjoyment. Rick Bass is a talented writer. I was impressed at the variety in the stories. I think my favorite was Her First Elk. I enjoyed reading about Jyl in that story and then reading about her again later in the title story, The Lives of Rocks. Rick Bass tells you enough about the characters to get you intrigued, but never enough to satisfy. Both in terms of the characters and the events, you are left wondering, which I love. There are naturalist and environmentalist aspects to many of the stories, which I think is one of the unique characteristics of Rick Bass as an author. While these aspects of the stories are not what attracted me to him, I can certainly appreciate them. However, I reserve my greatest respect for the writer that wraps whatever he or she wants to say so tightly into the plot and characters that you have to think beyond your initial impressions to grasp that message and appreciate what the author is saying and has accomplished. Rick Bass achieves this in some stories, but in others it is as if the message was painted separately from the rest of the story and distracts the reader from the story. I will definitely read more of Rick Bass, though. He has earned more of my time. ( )

Rick Bass is wonderful, and so is his writing. I'll admit that I only really liked a couple of the stories--the rest I loved! It's hard to pick my favorite of the ten stories because they're all good in different ways, but I have good reason to believe that "Fiber" will be the story I end up rereading the most. ( )

Rick Bass's new collection contains a broad range of characters and settings: the title story concerns a woman recovering from cancer; "Pagans" tells, at forty years' distance, of a girl and two boys -- one of whom was in love with her -- and the dangerous games they played; in "Her First Elk," a woman reflects on her first elk hunt and on her memories of her father and two brothers, now all dead. These stories, distinguished by their maturity, are narrated by men and women with compelling life tales. Filled with Bass's hallmark lean and beautiful prose, they are further proof of his mastery of the short fiction form. ( )