Kelly Link for Beginners

{brief: paperback; collection of short stories; roughly 300 pages; worst & most inappropriate cover quote of recommendation i've ever read}

rating: pick this bitch up, pronto


I was mid-ravage at my favourite bookstore {pages, kensington} when the woman behind the counter gave me pause. I stilled my frenzied grappling long enough to join her at the bookshelf.

"You like some of the more experimental fiction, don't you?"

"Oh, I do."

After re-establishing my adoration of Garbiel Garcia Marquez and other fantastical whatnots, she informed me that there was some underground following for Kelly Link's fiction and that I would likely be the next banana on the boat. Well, paint me yellow and have a woman with a fruit basket for a hat, sing about not letting me ripen in the fridge: because I am all over that boat.

Alright, so I have a hard time reading & recommending books that don't have really mind-blowing covers- at least very clever ones. Inventive typography, etc. I'm vain and like the attention that clever books draw to me while i'm reading. And, it is safe to say that Magic (for beginners)'s cover is not my favourite and won't be winning me over with any curious, erudite barista boys. To make it worse, the cover quote involves traces of Harry Potter:

"[Link] spins her stories in such charming, matter of fact tones that you almost don't realize you're entering a hybrid world that's part Muggle and part magic" -Time

Muggles? I mean come on- Muggles? Okay. J.K-fucking-Rowling can lead you from A to Z in a plot, but she exercises very little by way of literary device, vocabulary, phrasing and pleasing me in any way. Link, on the other hand, has very practiced, equal-parts charming/eloquant use of english.

Rowling takes reality and splits it down the middle, fencing off her new and invented magical realm from the familiar with very little overlap, let alone intertwining. For the most part, Link doesn't construct a new fantasy world or erect any fences: she takes familiar breeds (zombies, witches, gypsies & ghosts); backs them with an invented foundation (rules & understandings); and nets them into present-tense stories (often with jarringly contemporary references like Bring it On) or ambiguously timed fairy-tales. Also unlike Rowling, Link doesn't get off on real-world derivatives and, though it's seamless writing, there is no question when it's fantastical. It is beautiful storytelling, long before it is "clever inventing" (which should be left to the self-congratulating Mary Shellys of our time).

As a side-note, she lives in Massachussets and that is relieving for me. Authors are so obvious when they are writing as a Canadian Writer.

If all you want to know is, "how does it relate to McSweeny's?":
What can I say? The titles are short and I think Dave Eggers's gang is starting to make that a little embarrassing. But, apparently, they like her quite a bit and she's included in the Mammoth Treasurey of Thrilling Tales. I happen to like it much more than I've liked anything pumped out of the Eggers Factory for awhile now...


If you like any of the following, pick this bitch up pronto:

* Catskin:
Now, since witches cannot have children in the usual way– their wombs are full of straw or bricks or stones, and when they give birth, they give birth to rabbits, kittens, tadpoles, houses, silk dresses.... One girl she had grown like a cyst, upon her thigh. Other children she had made out of things in her garden, or bits of trash that the cats brought her: aluminum foil with strings of chicken fat still crusted to it, broken television sets, cardboard boxes that the neighbors had thrown out.

* Lull: Pete isn't really into this. Imaginary houses are sexy. Real ones are work.

* Magic for beginners:
Jeremy runs all the way,slapping his old track shoes against the sidewalk for the pleasure of the jar, for the sweetness of the sting. He likes the rough, cottony ache in his lungs

Talis opens the door.. She grins at him, although he can tell that she's been crying, too. She's wearing a T-shirt that says I'M SO GOTH I SHIT TINY VAMPIRES. "Hey," Jeremy says. Talis nods. Talis isn't so goth, at least not as far as Jeremy or anyone else knows. Talis just has a lot of T-shirts. She's an enigma wrapped in a mysterious T-shirt. A woman once said to Calvin Coolidge, "Mr. President, I bet my husband that I could get you to say more than two words." Coolidge said, "You lose." Jeremy can imagine Talis as Calvin Coolidge in a former life. Or maybe she was one of those dogs that don't bark.


The Great Divorce:
Sarah wondered why the living, who were so very much more solid, after all, than te dead, so often looked shifty and deceitful to her. She tried not to be prejudiced. But the dead were so beautiful, so fixed and so fluid, like sheets of calligraphy. They belonged to her, although she told herself that she was wrong to feel this way.


Favourite Stories:
Catskin
The Cannon
The Faery Handbag
The Hortlak

[ currently reading:Misfortune by Wesley Stace & Literature and the Right to Death by Maurice Blanchot ]