Review by Jen Glyn
Kelly Link has been getting rave reviews for years. The fact that she isn’t better known is probably the result of the British publishing industry’s squeamishness regarding short stories and science fiction (however literary or, in Link’s case, intelligent it is). Last year’s Nebula Awards (for science fiction writers) were a Link love-in, with her stories ‘The Faery’s Handbag’ and ‘Magic for Beginners’ appearing in the anthology. After the reading them I experienced something like an instant conversion. I ordered Magic For Beginners online and sat by my front door dribbling and drumming my fingers on the doormat until it arrived. Link writes like a dream, a real dream. Think of your very best dreams, the dreams with an odd, yet convincing, logic, and characters who resemble your friends and family, only ever so slightly … wrong. Link’s blend of fantasy and umheimlich means she is frequently compared to Borges. For me it’s as if Joy Williams hooked up with Steven King sometime, perhaps after dinner, LSD and the DVD of Mulholland Drive, and the end result was a big-eyed baby Kelly Link getting dumped on Angela Carter’s doorstep.
Link blows other genres out of the water. Magical realism? Compared to Link the whole genre seems as lifeless and hackneyed as a pop up book. Likewise science fiction. She’s their darling at the moment but I suspect they are already mumbling that she’s making the other guys look bad. She can make you terrified of stone rabbits and persuade you that there are far stranger things than zombies visiting your 24-hour garage.
If you are concerned that this collection might be a little heavy on whimsy for the average reader (and we all know there is nothing more irritating than listening to someone else’s dreams), you would do well not to worry. Link’s plots are tight and Magic For Beginners is a collection that marks her out as a master of the short story form – Poe perhaps, putting the moves on Lovecraft in a Diner populated by the dead. Buy Magic for Beginners and, if you must, conjecture about Kelly Link’s parentage. But really, buy Magic for Beginners.
Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link (HarperPerennial, £7.99) is out now
3 Comments
I like Kelly Link’s stuff a lot. Found her about two three years ago along with a bunch of other interesting fantasy writers who work is similarly idiosyncratic - Jeff Vandermeer, Jeffrey Ford, Geoff Ryman (lots of Jefs!)…actually this could be a long list. Link is one of the best of a crop of great writers coming out of fantasy at the moment.
We published a review of Magic for Beginners on The Short Review (http://www.theshortreview.com/reviews/KellyLinkMagicForBeginners.htm) a few months ago, and it certainly made me wish I had my own copy. Coming soon: an interview with Kelly Link, would be great to see where her inspiration comes from!
I dug Magic as well, although I liked Faery Handbag and Zombie Contingency better than Stone Rabbits which had me rooting for the rabbits by the end. She doesn’t feel much like a fantasy writer to me–probably because I have bad sterotypes about fantasy requiring dwarves and bad writing. She seems to be more like a contemporary short story writer in the Carver tradition who also includes zombies.
Sort of like Scott Snyder’s Voodoo Heart collection?
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