"You learn how to be lonely" - An anticipatory review

[Cross-posted to my livejournal page, for those who read both]
November 2006: I have lived in Austin for exactly seven months. One of my favorite people (Random Thinkables) is coming in town to visit me. We are attending the World Fantasy Convention, which happens to be in town this year. I look at the schedule and circle every appearance by Kelly Link. I plan to stalk her, declare my undying love for her, after which I will either 1) be asked to leave; or 2) be asked to join her and her husband (equally talented, though not as prolific, author Gavin Grant) in Massachussetts to work at their publishing company, Small Beer Press.

An excerpt from my book review of Magic for Beginners:
Perhaps, in the reading of it, I have gleaned some knowledge into the paranormal, the quixotic, the hidden theme park adult playland for zombies and other recently departed, and those dead souls waiting to be reborn. In finishing it, I feel I just came home from playing at my weirdest, coolest new friend's house, the one to which I thought I'd never get invited. I hope she lets me sit at her table for lunch tomorrow.

Kelly Link manages to bridge a gap in short story writing I feel has been absent for years, or possibly has never existed. Her work, usually genre-fied as "speculative" flows too easily from the imaginary to hyper-realistic. For every faery handbag, there is a very real teenage girl desperate to fix something she broke. So while the situations are speculative - replete with monsters, haunted houses, the undead, and Greek gods reborn - her stories are populated by someone we all recognize within ourselves, our friends, our neighbors. Their reactions become ours.

Or, as stated in an article in The Phoenix: She’s the rare writer who’s able to mix these [pop cultural] of-the-moment items, products, and activities with the eternal, the timeless: quests, coming of age, entering a new world, death, and the day-to-day mysteries of being human.

As someone who is constantly, anthropologically fascinated by the day-to-day mysteries of being human, Link's stories appeal to me in spite of their inherent darkness. There are few happy endings here, and I find I mind little when confronted with writing so completely bewitching.

From The Specialist's Hat (click link to read the entire story):

Last year, they were learning fractions in school when her mother died. Fractions remind Samantha of herds of wild horses, piebalds and pintos and palominos. There are so many of them, and they are, well, fractious and unruly. Just when you think you have one under control, it throws up its head and tosses you off. Claire's favorite number is 4, which she says is a tall, skinny boy. Samantha doesn't care for boys that much. She likes numbers. Take the number 8, for instance, which can be more than one thing at once. Looked at one way, 8 looks like a bent woman with curvy hair. But if you lay it down on its side, it looks like a snake curled with its tail in its mouth. This is sort of like the difference between being Dead and being dead. Maybe when Samantha is tired of one, she will try the other.

More from my review:
Magic for Beginners is one of those books that cannot stay within the boundaries of a single description.
-It is fantastical writing with a literary bent.
-It is a collection of literary short stories with an air of magic realism.
-It has zombies (but not the kind that eat your brain), and interview with a recently-divorced cannon (the kind that shoots people over the crowds), a haunted house guarded by rabbits (or is it the marriage that's haunted and are the rabbits preparing for war?), a not-so-nice fairy tale involving cats (or are they witches?), zombie contingency plans, metafiction, and stories within stories within stories that cycle back into themselves in such a way one could read the story forwards, backwards or even in a starburst pattern from the inside out.
These aren't happy stories. They're melancholy and best read between 2 and 4 a.m. while the zombies are at their local convenience store looking for things that aren't there and handing pajamas to the night clerk.

Kelly Link's latest book of short stories, Pretty Monsters, is being marketed for the YA crowd, because Sharyn November (who I stalked at August 2007's Armadillo Con) is smart enough to know her stories can appeal to a broader audience than she's been given. And also because teens and pre-teens are less involved in worrying about what "genre" the book they're reading says about their intellectual capacity. They just want something good to read.

Kelly Link is better than good. In my eyes, she is a Rock Star of short story writing, which is why stalking her held such sweaty-palmed anticipation for me. I couldn't even imagine how to approach someone whose stories always contained a hint of menace, somehow without seeming morose, or even dark. How is it I can meet actors and musicians without barely a "meh" and meeting a writer makes me all quivery inside?

As it turns out, I simply approach her at the Small Beer table in the expo room. I gush a little bit overmuch, but hopefully with the same articulate intelligence I tend to always gush. I make reference to the "lunch table" comment in my review. At her reading at Book People (literally the coolest bookstore ever), I tell her that if her stories were food, I would eat them everyday. I believe she is pleased. Because even professional writers, I have learned, love to hear their work has touched people. Even if those people are touched.

Magic for Beginners and Stranger Things Happen are under Creative Commons licensing and are available for free download here and here.
Pretty Monsters is available now. Do not be afraid to enter the teen section of your bookstore to pick it up.