On "Boy, a Cat, a Lifeboat" by Claudia Smith (641 words) ****

The Web site A Boy, a Cat, a Lifeboat is devoted to one concept--stories involving these three things, a play on Yan Martel's novel The Life of Pi, for which Martel was accused of stealing the idea. The Web site rightly shows that ideas aren't things one can protect, that one concept can be taken any number of directions. Each of the stories on the site are interesting in their own way, but among them, Smith's is my favorite. It conveys loss so strongly in just a bit over six hundred words. Sure, tigers are involved, as is a boy. The lifeboat is metaphorical--and a strong metaphor at that. At the start, the boy's mother thinks of herself as a lifeboat, but by the end she's looking for one. Read the story here at A Boy, a Cat, a Lifeboat.