The City is a Rising Tide

by Rebecca Lee

Obsessed with a boss whom she first met in Beijing during her childhood, Justine Laxness embezzles money from her employer to help an old college flame, screenwriter James Nutter, a decision that has unforeseen ramifications. A first novel. 30,000 first printing.

Genres: Fiction, Novels

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Hi Everyone! Below is more about me. Reminder that you will get Twenty FREE books (and counting) when you join my Readers Club. Click on my website link above. FREE to join!

Rebecca Lee was born in Central California to Italian and Filipino parents. She grew up on the Gulf Coast of Florida where she did some modeling work in her late teens while attempting to put her way through junior college. She began writing to help men become better at attracting women and was signed by author John Handy to write a series of books on attraction from the female point of view.

Her first published fiction book "A Slave to the Fantasy" is a romantic thriller set in her mom's native Philippines.

Her first novel, "The President's Lover" was be released in December 2014.

Reach her on Email at authorrebeccalee@gmail.com. Join her mailing list at http://authorrebeccalee.blogspot.com and get a FREE book!

Reviews

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are few fiction writers as good as Rebecca Lee whose work I've read in recent years - David Szalay and Rachel Cusk are the only other two who leap immediately to mind. I'd deify them if I had that sort of power. Fortunately, I don't, as I think they'd probably prefer to live in the world, as humans, and remain who they are. I hope so, anyway; I love the books they've written.

THE CITY IS A RISING TIDE is a beautiful, lonely, unusual, original, lyrical, extremely enjoyable novel. I didn't want it to end. I'm so glad Rebecca Lee exists. More books, please. As soon as possible. I loved BOBCAT AND OTHER STORIES too - I probably think about that story collection several times a day. Thoughts about it and THE CITY IS A RISING TIDE arrive unbidden, the way breathing happens.

[tinabel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like Bobcat (Lee’s subsequent book of short stories), The City is a Rising Tide is written in Lee’s signature lyrical and heart-breakingly beautiful prose, though perhaps not quite as engrossing. Vaguely reminiscent of Heather O'Neill's (Lullabies for Little Criminals) writing style.

The plot is inconsequential, perhaps even an afterthought, but in a pleasant and refreshing way. The day-to-day actions and thoughts, even when minute-seeming, are much more interesting than the story as a whole.

The City is a Rising Tide reveals to the reader the beauty and occasional comfort that can be found in sadness, and how the past is ever our compass to the future. The story is an ode to the places that live in one’s heart – in this case, China, New York City, and the prairies of Saskatchewan.

Bobcat and Other Stories
Lullabies for Little Criminals

[Fifi · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Everything's just setting, if you think about it, people are ornamental.'
#DeZinVanHetBoek #ThePointOfTheBook

[loyboy · Rating 4 out of 5]

i didn’t really get it? but the writing was wonderful and i think it’s one of those books you’re supposed to feel more than understand.

[Susannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this to be a lovely gem of a read which I picked up at the library purely on the basis of its small compact paperback size and its title. Somehow the author nails into a variety of deep political questions with a funny and readable tone and hilariously drawn middle-aged characters coming to terms with choices squeezed by age, geography, roles, trends and timing, and personal foibles. I think this would be a fantastic read for anyone who loves, struggles with, or misses the game of wheeling and dealing in gainfully employed city life. What I loved most was the most brilliant, arresting, moving, haiku-like descriptions of relationships against the city backdrop from dusk til nightfall...gorgeous yet thin, non-pretentious descriptions of those things that make city life so loveable...faces, light, buildings.

[Caley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such a promising beginning and middle; the prose is sharp, witty, and unexpectedly poetic. The characters are full (and full of themselves too!) and the city feels alive and true. But oh, dear, what happened with this conclusion? Worst denouement ever! No ends wrapped up, no hints as to the status of Justine and Peter's relationship, no closing of any plot lines. Essentially the central conflict of the novel is resolved with one sentence. What the hell? This isn't some innovative technique of new-age writing, it's just bad. Three stars.

[Alyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

So poetic, so intelligent, so funny. I have so many underlined passages in this short book. How can one write about what it feels like to be alive? Or to describe a language? Rebecca Lee, in her own modest but awe inspiring way, does this, humbly. This is, essentially, a tale of unrequited love. But there is so much more here. There is an examination of money, art, intimacy, friendship, politics, disability, acceptance. Beauty. This book is a tiny treasure.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have no idea why I liked this book so much. Very little seems to actually happen, but it's kind of nice just listening to someone talk about moods and impressions without necessarily building to a climax, not unlike the film Justine's friend tries to shoot in the book.

[Jonathan Gruber · Rating 3 out of 5]

well written slice of life book but ultimately not that interesting

[Madison Weir · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such evocative and beautiful writing!

[Matthew Harvill · Rating 3 out of 5]

The short chapters made this the perfect book before bed. Entertaining story and artistic prose.

[Rick · Rating 1 out of 5]

An impulse purchase that I should have resisted, Lee’s first novel starts well (I was seduced by its opening pages in the bookstore) but wanders off the cliff of vague, off-stage melodrama. Her protagonist is a 31 year old money manager for a niche charity. She is in love with her partner and fond of a former boyfriend who is making an improbable film about a superhero who changes gender from male to female when the going gets tough. Somehow circumstances conspire in a kind of off-handed way that leads her to use the charity’s encumbered money to invest in the film. It eventually makes The Times, you hear as the novel winds down, and this is what amounts to what the flap copy breathlessly describes as a “tidal wave of betrayal and destruction,” when it barely unsettles the carriage ride she is taking with one of the betrayed and destroyed. None of the plot lines ring true and the details of action and motivation are so bare of experience that understatement is not only without narrative impact but instead calls attention to the silliness of the premise. Like that Peanuts cartoon when Linus puts everyone’s hands he draws behind their backs not because it shows character insecurity but because he can’t draw hands. Lee says little because to say more would reveal her ignorance—delaying a settlement payment to someone who has her landlord on trial wouldn’t prevent those waiting for payment to bring up her admission of culpability (where there is no apparent culpability by the way), The Times wouldn’t report the charity’s legal woes on page 9 (faux humility on Lee’s part) of the A section but in the tiniest of boxes in the Business section, if at all, no one would begin filming wheat growing in Saskatchewan in October, 300 grand wouldn’t impact a studio film’s big budget enough to influence in some vague way their decisions and save her ex-boyfriend’s vision and control. Her economy of detail is bankrupt.

[lonner · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story takes place in Manhattan as do countless other books, but this is one of the good ones. It is autumn of 1993. The narrator (a truly lovable main character) works at a non-profit and is in love with her older boss. Their situation at the non-profit is tenuous because of the Three Gorges Dam over the Yangtze River in China. In addition to a funny, absurdist and irreverent storyline, the reader also gets a decent history lesson of communist china and its leader Mao Tse Tung.

The author, Rebecca Lee, is an excellent storyteller. I have read a collection of her short fiction called Bobcat as well as this novel. I love the ways she develops believable characters. As weird as they are, with all their flaws, you care about them and want them to solve their troubles. She has a great ear for dialogue so that rings true as well.

I would agree with some other goodread reviewers that the ending is abrupt and their are some issues with the threadbare plot, but I would still recommend this book to a friend. You will laugh because of the absurd situations that develop as well as funny sections of dialog.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in early 1990s Manhattan, the novel tells the story of Justine Laxness, a thirty-something trust fund baby who spends her days running a nonprofit called Aquinas. Aquinas is devoted to establishing a healing center on the banks of China's Yangtze River and is the all-consuming passion of Justine's longtime love, Peter. Peter is much older than Justine and totally incapable of returning her affection. Their shared history together in China and mutual devotion to Aquinas cause Justine to make a series of catastrophic personal and business decisions.

I wanted to like this book more than I did. The characters are moody and unique and the author truly allows you to see how enamored they are with their ideas about China and New York. Her writing style is lovely and evocative. However, I couldn't relate to Justine at all and never became connected with her in a way that would make this book powerful. The slippery slope that Justine is clinging to is apparent, but in the end I wasn't sufficiently moved by her fate.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

"But like everybody, I have moments when I life my head and see a face as familiar as Bonnie-Beth's, like a clearing in a thicket, and somebody hands me a plate of Old World comfort food, and the night outside is black and starry, and the music inside rises, an old, somewhat sentimental and fascist violin, and if a person could describe everything--everything on the walls, the red velvet, the photos of the dead, and everything on the street outside, the thrilling carnival of the Village, Soho, and Chinatown and the Battery beyond sprialling down into darkness and the sea--if you could somehow get those details down, that would explain what it felt like to be a person alive, inside and warm, allowed to sit in the midst of it."

Or this: "...religious ideas only sound good inside one's own brain, whirling around in blood and darkness."

Really wonderful parables snuck inside a story that seems less a story than a container for fortune slips of poetry.

[Tamsen · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars.

Another Goodreads reviewer describes the plot as an afterthought. It is true - the real beauty here lies not with Justine and Peter and James. Instead, you fall in love with what's happening around them - the New Yorkers yelling sentences through the rain, the gestures Mrs. Tetreses makes as she regards her living room picture window, the feeling of the money-flow through a party.

What didn't work for me was China (is it because I'm a history major and knowing nothing of Mao and Red Guards and revolution reminds me of the failure of not being able to know everything? is it because I'm a reader and not having a general understanding of the deeper themes/threads of a plot impedes me from enjoying a read completely?) and also probably the missing pieces of character, motivation, and plot - too many holes.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The City is a Rising Tide, we meet Justine, a woman secretly in love with her boss who so loses herself in her longing for him that she ultimately sabotages his business and destroys her future in the process.

Justine reads like one of those people we all know, who allow life to happen TO them while lamenting all the things that go well for other people. The first real action we see her take is one that leaves us screaming, "Don't do it!"

With an unreliable narrator and an ending left up to the reader's imagination, this is not a book for those who like things neatly tied up. For those who appreciate a lot of shades of grey in their reading, this moody novel delivers.

[Jaime · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was interesting to read this book after reading Bobcat and Other Stories. It was clear that Lee had created some of the characters and themes in this book (or perhaps in earlier short stories) and then explored these same characters and themes in more detail in her short stories. While this book is not as engaging as Bobcat, I enjoyed the story line and the details about China, and I felt like I was visiting old friends as characters familiar from Bobcat showed up in the novel.

[Fran · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved the beauty & ease of the language of this book and the China connections. It is a quirky book. Justine, the narrator, is quietly obsessed with her boss--the two characters that have depth to them. OK, three--because NYC is very alive and painted lovingly. Her creative money management for a non-profit organization is comic, but needs more drama or suspense to create the "rising tide."

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't find the plot of this short novel particularly compelling but I would recommend reading the book merely for its great descriptions of New York City. Lee describes the city in the way that only someone who has spent considerable time there could and in a way that makes clear she loves the place.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really liking this book and then I came to the end. Except there really isn't an ending...it was like the author could not figure out how to end it so she just gave up. The main character, Justine, was very interesting and you really want to know why she makes the choices she does, and what the consequences will be, but we will never know. It's too bad; it could have been much better.

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some beautiful writing--I kept turning down the corners of pages to mark memorable phrases. The plot, though, drifts away, unfinished--to be more poetic? To let us finish writing the story in our heads? Not sure, and not sure what I wanted to happen, but it's not entirely successful. Still, it was enjoyable.

[Rosa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhat slight compared to Bobcat, her recently published collection of short stories, which was phenomenal. Numerous lovely turns of phrases and powerful imagery in this book, but not much else in terms of plot or characterization....

[Jill Olswanger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Admired the book for its beautiful prose and ambition more than I liked it. Understand that Rebecca Lee was attempting something ambiguous, open-ended and realistic. Ultimately lacks the punch of her short stories.

[Kristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the language and imagery in this book! It felt like I was reading a Terrence Malick movie. I read it because I saw that Rebecca Lee was going to be at our NC Library Association 2013 conference, and I'm so glad I did.

[Claire Humphrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting characters, to a point; but for a book built around a crime, it's sadly inconclusive. By the second half, the momentum dissipates under the weight of boring conversation and inchoate emotions. Some fine prose though.

[Miriam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another one that is a great combo of beautiful writing and a plot that just keeps the pages turning. This is the ideal kind of book, I think.

[Carson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was not deep enough for this book (at least I hope there was something deeper here than boring unrequited love that I just missed)

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I haven't finished this one yet, but the concept is intriguing. The main female character is driving me crazy with her silly infatuation over her boss. It had better get better or I will be mad.

[Kirk Weikart · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was extremely well written, however, I am not a big fan of novels that never complete the plots.