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Magic for Beginners

by Kelly Link, Shelley Jackson (Illustrations)

3.92 of 5 stars 3.92 · rating details · 3,434 ratings · 545 reviews

The nine stories in Link's second collection are the spitting image of those in her acclaimed debut, Stranger Things Happen: effervescent blends of quirky humor and pathos that transform stock themes of genre fiction into the stuff of delicate lyrical fantasy. In "Stone Animals," a house's haunting takes the unusual form of hordes of rabbits that camp out nightly on the fr...more

Paperback, 297 pages

Published September 5th 2006 by Mariner Books (first published January 1st 2005)

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Jun 05, 2007 Fred rated it 4 of 5 stars

Here's the review from my twice-yearly zine (October '06). I think I preferred Link's debut short story collection, Stranger Things Happen, but I definitely appreciate what she's aiming for her. Nobody writes stories quite like hers:

Kelly Link is herself no stranger to the bizarre,
or even to charges of sometimes wading too deep
into its waters for some readers’ taste.

In a recent missive to members of her online
writing workshop, Link encouraged writers to
“submit more ambitious work....stories and...more

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Nov 15, 2012 tee rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories, e-pube, oriana-is-my-book-muse, to-buy

Like Grimm's on a hit of acid. Or Lemony Snicket if he wasn't so flaccid. Just kidding, I love Snicket, i just wanted to make a rhyme. Maybe a bit like Miranda July's night terrors would be like after a night on magic mushrooms? Murakami inside Raoul Duke's body visiting a Hayao Miyazaki movie (say, Spirited Away)? Or really, I shouldn't bother with comparisons because Kelly Link is like nothing else I've ever read.

One day I will no longer be surprised that I like books that everyone hates and...more Like Grimm's on a hit of acid. Or Lemony Snicket if he wasn't so flaccid. Just kidding, I love Snicket, i just wanted to make a rhyme. Maybe a bit like Miranda July's night terrors would be like after a night on magic mushrooms? Murakami inside Raoul Duke's body visiting a Hayao Miyazaki movie (say, Spirited Away)? Or really, I shouldn't bother with comparisons because Kelly Link is like nothing else I've ever read.

One day I will no longer be surprised that I like books that everyone hates and hate books that everyone likes. Though in this instance, I loved this book (like the majority of its readers) but my favourite story, Catskin, doesn't seem to be the universal favourite. I read it and was like, ho boy, I can't wait to get on goodreads and connect with all the other people who surely thought it was the best out of the collection. We can give each other high fives and eat sherbet whilst reminiscing over how fantastic our reading experience was. Not, so. Oh well. I thought Catskin was magnificent. But then I am partial to tales about witches and I do have a hairless cat companion and am now convinced there's some other type of creature inside. He is literally a cat shaped skin bag with a monkey's character. Escaped straight from Link's twisted mind.

I mean, how could you read this and not curl your toes up in glee?

The dollhouse chimney had broken off and fallen on the ground. One of the cats picked it up and carried it away, like a souvenir. The cat carried the chimney into the woods and ate it, a mouthful at a time, and passed out of this story and into another one. It’s no concern of ours.

The Stone Animals was also great, made you feel funny in your toes and in your stomach. Or like you had toes in your stomach. I'm mentioning toes a lot but toes are weird and fitting for a review on a book such as this. I loved the opening story, The Hortlak.. Zombies living in a chasm, weirdo pyjamas, a convenience store, a girl with a car full of dog ghosts. Going by the keywords, you wouldn't think it'd be half as riveting or unsettling as it was. Trying to briefly explain any of these stories to someone who hasn't read this book is impossible. Go on, try to, I dare you. Better yet, just tell them to check out the story in full on her website here.

The only ones that left me a little flat were The Great Divorce and Lull however I suspect that that has a lot to do with the fact that a book that I have been itching to read arrived in the mail before I finished Magic and I just couldn't focus. So I'ma come back and read those ones again (properly) another time. This book is probably actually more a four star for me but I loved Catskin so much that it's going to have to be a five.

I imagine Link to be the Helena Bonham Carter of the lit world. All mismatched socks and curled toe witch boots, birds nest hair and a magic air. In my usual fashion, I'd typically say that I want to seduce and marry her, whisk her away to an island made of marshmallow and scattered with bunnies but she weirds me out a little too much. Maybe we could live in two separate houses, joined by a bridge (sort of how Bonham-Carter and Burton live). Or she can just stay right where she is and continue weaving her magic into her nightmarish fairytales.

The only thing I'm sure of is that I wouldn't want to be her child at story time before bed.(less)

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Dec 05, 2007 Trish rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Link garners effusive praise from Jonathan Lethem, China Mieville, Michael Chabon, Peter Straub, Alice Sebold, et al. Sometimes I get it, and sometimes I don't. Some of her stories I enjoy, some of them I don't.

For example, take the two stories in this collection that I had read previously: Catskin and Stone Animals, both of which I read in McSweeney's. I liked Catskin slightly more the second time around, but it still rates a thumbs down. It's the tale of a witch and her three children and her...more Link garners effusive praise from Jonathan Lethem, China Mieville, Michael Chabon, Peter Straub, Alice Sebold, et al. Sometimes I get it, and sometimes I don't. Some of her stories I enjoy, some of them I don't.

For example, take the two stories in this collection that I had read previously: Catskin and Stone Animals, both of which I read in McSweeney's. I liked Catskin slightly more the second time around, but it still rates a thumbs down. It's the tale of a witch and her three children and her revenge. Strange things happen, and then other strange things happen, and in the end more strange things happen. I think because it's not grounded in any kind of reality that I can recognize, I just couldn't invest in the characters. There's the crazy witch who dies and becomes a cat, and her devoted son, who she dresses in a cat skin, and they kill the witch who poisoned her and they turn his children back into cats, and probably drown them. In short: Many cats are harmed in the course of the story.

Then there's Stone Animals, which I liked very much the first time around and continued to like very much on a second reading. Perhaps because it is grounded in a reality I recognize. A family moves to a house in the country that is reputed to be haunted. The father is always away, still working in the city. The very pregnant mother grows obsessed with painting the rooms of the house, even dreaming of drinking paint. The daughter sleepwalks. The son is afraid of the dark and of his father's beard. Everyone in the house senses things that are wrong, off ... haunted? First small things, like a toothbrush. But then the family cat. And then the daughter believes her brother is haunted. The yard is infested with rabbits. The father dreams that there are skyscrapers on the lawn and that his house continues down, down, down deep into the earth. Things are strange, but not strange enough to force them to take any drastic action. Life just continues, semi-normal but unsettlingly off-kilter.

And my favorite part of the story is something entirely un-supernatural. The parents' marriage has been rocky. The father is a problem-solver, something of a workaholic, always on the job "putting out fires." So his wife decides that she needs to give him a problem to solve. She confesses to an affair that she didn't have; she submits to marriage counseling to work on a problem that doesn't exist. This reinvigorates the marriage for a time, but now the move to the country has destabilized things. Her husband is always at work, long hours, weekends spent in the city. There are neighbors who think he doesn't exist. She's already played her strongest hand; this time, if the relationship is going to be saved, he'll have to be the one to save it.

Those two stories sort of encapsulate my feelings about Link. I like the stories that incorporate elements of the surreal or supernatural into a recognizable reality. The stories that are entirely strange and supernatural just don't appeal to me. (less)

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Feb 04, 2008 Rob rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Rob by: Creighton

Shelves: ambulothanatophobia, wishlist, collection, 2007

Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners collection. Pretty awesome. A lot of “coming of age” stuff and adolescent themes. But beyond charming and cute. Insightful and provocative. And sexy in that “I just found out what sexy is” sort of way. Highlights include “The Faery Handbag” (makes you bite your lip and fall in love with life again), the puzzlingly epiphanic “The Hotlak”, and the absolutely fucking terrifying “Stone Animals”. There are a couple of these short stories I feel the need to re-read to...more

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Apr 01, 2011 Tristan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-read-2010

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Most of this book is 5-star worthy. My favorite piece is the title story, so I'll review that:

In an interview with Kirsten Kowalewski, Kelly Link said, “what I hope is that it's a bit like going to a Penn and Teller magic show, or a Ricky Jay show, and being told how the trick is done even as you're watching the trick.” In the interview Link was explaining how her story Magic For Beginners showed the relationships stories have with readers (or watcher/listeners). The duality of being told a stor...more Most of this book is 5-star worthy. My favorite piece is the title story, so I'll review that:

In an interview with Kirsten Kowalewski, Kelly Link said, “what I hope is that it's a bit like going to a Penn and Teller magic show, or a Ricky Jay show, and being told how the trick is done even as you're watching the trick.” In the interview Link was explaining how her story Magic For Beginners showed the relationships stories have with readers (or watcher/listeners). The duality of being told a story while being shown how storytelling effects people is shown in the way Kelly Link uses metafictive techniques. When readers first see Jeremy and friends dressing up as their favorite characters from The Library, they become symbols for their own fandom to The Library. When Talis and Jeremy start getting closer to one another, Link uses tension to show the literal changes stories can make in our lives. In Kelly Link’s Magic For Beginners, she uses metafictive techniques, fandom and story-effect to illustrate the relationship between reader and writers.
In Magic For Beginners, Kelly Link uses Metafictive techniques to represent the relationship between stories and their readers. Throughout “Magic For Beginners” the story is told from the perspective of a third-person narrator, a separate entity from Jeremy, though Jeremy is the main character. This distinction is only addressed in the first two paragraphs of the novella. The concentration on Jeremy’s life and perspective makes it therefore easy for readers to see the story along the same lines as him, forgetting the extra layers to the story. This can result in less attention being paid to any meta-levels of fiction and more devoted to the “internal story”. As Link said in the interview with Kowalewski, she wants to tell the story as well as point out to readers how stories affect their readers. This directive is oriented when the narrator states in the first paragraph, “You’ve never seen The Library on TV, but I bet you wish you had. (Page 204)” An Amazon one-star reviewer, David Cortesi, summed his feelings of the novella in a review of the book:
“Despite her wide knowledge, wit, and clever turns of phrase, Link is essentially a lazy writer who lacks the will-power to finish a story. She shows a fundamental lack of respect for her reader and a fundamental distrust of the people she creates. No question she sprays the page with vivid little inventions, a peppery goulash of ideas. But all the clever invention, all the witty inversions of classic tropes in the world cannot disguise the fact that she treats both her reader and her characters in a cavalier, shabby way, and time after time ducks the fundamental responsibility of the tale-spinner: finishing the tale.” However legitimate his misgivings are about the novella, he seems to ironically miss the point. In his craving for an ending to Jeremy’s tale, he complies to the narrator’s only stated assumption: “You’ve never seen The Library on TV, but I bet you wish you had. (Page 204)” The point of all these different levels of metafiction seem to allow for Jeremy’s position on fandom to be more easily substituted with that of real people, and to the astute reader, even oneself as the story is told.
In Magic For Beginners Kelly Link uses fandom to illustrate the relationship between stories and their readers. Jeremy and his friends frequently get together to dress up like characters from their favorite show, The Library. This show of fandom parallels the fans of such events as conventions and certain movie premiers. At for example, a new Star Wars movie release, fans typically line up for the midnight showing, often dressed up as their favorite characters from the films. People’s obsessive fandom clearly has the potential to make even social stigmas irrelevant. Speaking to Elizabeth, Jeremy says, “This is terrible! What if there’s a new episode of The Library while I’m gone? Who am I going to watch it with? (Page 234)” Here Jeremy expresses as much worry about missing an episode of The Library as he does about not being with any of his friends. That there’s a social risk involved gives readers a point of reference to understand the power this particular show has over Jeremy, in turn reminding readers of the power that stories can have over us. If he’d said this to someone who didn’t share his fandom, it probably would have been damaging to his relationship with the other person. No one likes being unfavorably prioritized by a television show, so clearly stories can affect our real lives in unexpected and literal ways.
Kelly Link also uses story-effects from tales to illustrate the changes they can have on people in the real world. Jeremy’s mother wanted to get away from his father because of a scene in which he wrote Jeremy into a book and killed him off. Though it was just a story, it brought some literal changes as a result of the emotions the story generated. Jeremy and his friends make it clear that they have to keep in touch with each other to make sure they don’t miss an episode of The Library. The change that the show has on their lives is absolute and amorphous. The kids are essentially fans-on-call. Whenever the show comes on, wherever they are, they are determined to go out of their way to see the episode. Possibly the clearest metaphor for the influence stories have on our lives is when the internal Library starts to leak into Jeremy’s world. Whether or not Fox is real to him seems irrelevant. Jeremy believes it is and it prompts him to not only willingly go on the road trip, but eagerly. He believes he talks to Fox on the phone, who then gives him directions to go to a library and steal a book. The entire journey to this library is a direct effect The Library has on Jeremy’s life. His relationship with the show had become something more direct at this point.
In Magic For Beginners, Kelly Link creates a story that serves to show readers how stories relate with their readers, as well as to be a story on it’s own accord then finally to show how the influence of a story can seep beyond the pages and affect a person’s life. The relationship is therefore threefold. What a reader can expect from Kelly Link’s Magic For Beginners is to learn from a manual that teaches by example, how a story can change a reader. By putting a metafictive frame around Jeremy’s story, readers can see that their situation is much like Jeremy’s in relation to this story. Jeremy is worried about what has happened to Fox, and by the end of the novella, readers can expect to be worried about what will happen to Jeremy. We’re left in the same state of anticipation that Jeremy is left in. As fans, and that’s the point of the story. Link doesn’t care about what happens to Fox or Jeremy, but rather, whether or not the reader does.
(less)

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Jul 11, 2010 oriana rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: phenomenal, perennialfavorites, read-2009

Reading Kelly Link makes me wonder why anyone else ever tries to write anything at all. Honestly. I mean, I'm sorry to have to say this to all the people who write short stories and everything, but "Stone Animals" is the absolute very best short story that has ever been written ever. Oh, wait, except for "Lull". That's actually the very best short story that has ever been written ever. I can't decide, but anyway, the rest of the writing world should just give it up, nothing can top this book.

I f...more

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May 21, 2008 Emily rated it 4 of 5 stars

Nine short stories of magical realism, stories that shift effortlessly from fairy-tale mode to a much more naturalistic mode to surreal absurdity.

The thing about these stories--the frustrating, beautiful thing--is that they are not merely hard to understand. They resist all efforts to understand them. They hint at the feeling that, oh, if only you were smart enough, if only you spent enough time decoding the symbolism and the turns of phrase, everything would suddenly become bright-clear and rev...more

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Jul 10, 2008 Cher rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-stories, magical-realism

This collection of surreal short stories is one of the most striking books I've read in...my life. There is something utterly primal about the odd goings on in these tales that speaks to one's subconscious more loudly than to one's consciousness. These stories are not weird for weirdness' sake, neither are they science fiction. They are more on par with fairy tales, strumming at universal tropes and archetypes in the back on your brain. There were a few stories I did not like, that did not reson...more

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Feb 17, 2011 Melissa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Melissa by: Kelly W

Excellent short stories, surreal and dreamy but not confusing. This book contains one of my favorite short stories of all time, "Stone Animals," and also my new favorite short story of all time, "Magic for Beginners." Oh how I wish I could work at the Free People's World-Tree Library! "Euphoria is: The Librarian's Tonic - When Watchfulness Is Not Enough. Although no one is sure what Euphoria is for, whether it is alcoholic or caffeinated, what it tastes like, if it is poisonous or delightful, or...more

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Aug 17, 2008 Nancy added it

I can't give Magic For Beginners a rating, because it's simply a book that wasn't "for me." It's not fantasy; it's magic realism, and personally, I need some recognizable logic and structure in fiction. Kelly Link is a finely skilled writer, and there's many a delightful turn of phrase, but the complete picture of each story was unsatisfying. However, I don't care for Gabriel Garcia Marquez either, and while I couldn't even finish A HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, I did feel driven to read all the st...more

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May 11, 2013 Kyle Muntz rated it 2 of 5 stars

I'm really surprised to say this, but--I don't think I like this collection much. Each of the stories had brilliant elements but I kept feeling they were introduced and never used (probably because not many of them have conclusions). This probably isn't fair to Link though, since she's fantastic in a lot of ways. Maybe part of the problem is I've read some great books of short fiction recently that cover the same territory and used similar elements better--Peter Tieryas, Alyssa Nutting, Charles...more

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Nov 15, 2008 Jen rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone tired of the same old same old

Recommended to Jen by: 2005 Best American Short Stories

I read one short story by Kelly Link in an anthology and knew that she was magical. I had to have more, so I stole my man's copy of Magic for Beginners and read through it in one sitting. The realm of the fantastic is usually not my thing, but well-written creative pieces are and this book definitely qualifies. "Stone Animals" in this collection is usually picked as the stand-out piece, and it surely deserves to be so (who else could make paint licking sound so right?), but there are others tha...more

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Apr 15, 2008 Michael Hartford rated it 5 of 5 stars

I want it to be about good and evil and true love, and it should also be funny. No talking animals. Not too much fooling around with the narrative structure. The ending should be happy but still be realistic, believable, you know, and there shouldn’t be a moral although we should be able to think back later and have some sort of revelation. No and suddenly they woke up and discovered that it was all a dream. Got that?

These are the instructions given to sex-line operator Starlight in “Lull,” a f...more I want it to be about good and evil and true love, and it should also be funny. No talking animals. Not too much fooling around with the narrative structure. The ending should be happy but still be realistic, believable, you know, and there shouldn’t be a moral although we should be able to think back later and have some sort of revelation. No and suddenly they woke up and discovered that it was all a dream. Got that?

These are the instructions given to sex-line operator Starlight in “Lull,” a frame-in-a-frame-in-a-frame story in Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners. Link, like Starlight, follows some of these rules–the stories are about good and evil and true love, and often incredibly funny, and while not moralistic there is a sense of revelation in many of them; but there are talking animals, much fooling around with narrative structure, and dreams galore.

I read my first Link story in the most recent Best American Short Stories — “Stone Animals” — and it was so different from any of the other stories in the anthology, so Kafka-meets-Buffy-the-Vampire-Slayer, that I had to read more. And for the most part, I’m not at all disappointed in this collection, Link’s second. The stories are inventive and touching and haunting, like a half-remembered dream. And in the best stories — “The Faery Handbag”, “Stone Animals”, “Magic for Beginners”, “Lull” — they echo back to old fairy tales without being twee, and update their magic for the postmodern world.

My only complaints are that Link is sometimes too clever by half, and that a few of the stories could have been developed into so much more. “The Great Divorce”, for example, is an interesting idea–a world in which the living marry the dead through the services of a spirit medium–that somehow doesn’t develop beyond an interesting idea. And “Some Zombie Contingency Plans” hovers on the edge of unsettling without quite moving into the country of disturbing.

Of all the stories, the title story could have been developed into even more. The story ended when it was just getting good; I wish that this one had been developed into a novella, perhaps, or a novel, or maybe one of those sprawling multi-volume collections of tomes that fantasy fiction so often spawns. There was a lot of material, a lot of great ideas, a lot of wonderful characters that I had to leave far too early. And that’s not necessarily a criticism; I will gladly go back into Link’s worlds again.(less)

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Jun 16, 2008 Dusty rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2008

Nothing is impossible in a Kelly Link story. There are nine stories in this collection, and while a few of these shine more luminously than the others, all are read-worthy. That is not a compliment I would give many one-author short story anthologies, most of which resemble pop albums -- a few noteworthy singles, enough filler to make us feel like we've purchased a full album.

"Stone Animals" I first read in The Best American Short Stories of 2005. It introduces us to a northeastern family intere...more Nothing is impossible in a Kelly Link story. There are nine stories in this collection, and while a few of these shine more luminously than the others, all are read-worthy. That is not a compliment I would give many one-author short story anthologies, most of which resemble pop albums -- a few noteworthy singles, enough filler to make us feel like we've purchased a full album.

"Stone Animals" I first read in The Best American Short Stories of 2005. It introduces us to a northeastern family interested in moving away from the hustle and bustle of the city and into a nice, relaxed suburb. They find a beautiful and ornate old abandoned home and -- what luck! -- its price just matches what the family is able to spend. If this sounds a little Amityville Horror, well, that's Link's intention. She both flaunts and flouts the conventions of the haunted house story. Sometimes the result is comic. Other times, it is downright creepy.

"Stone Animals" is one of the weirdest in the Best American collection, but in Magic For Beginners, it is perhaps the most mundane. Consider these: In "The Faery Handbag," a young woman inherits, then misplaces, a mysterious dog-skin purse in which an entire city resides. In "The Hortlak," two convenience store attendants, one of whom wears special rechargeable CIA pajamas, work a store on the border between the United States and Canada, between the living world and an underworld occupied by docile zombies. In "The Cannon," which is told in question-and-answer format, a man falls in love with -- and marries -- an actual artillery cannon. In what is probably my favorite story, "Catskin," an orphaned boy, son to an assassinated witch, dons an unconvincing cat costume and goes about seeking revenge for his mother's murder.

Each of these stories is otherworldly. Yet Link's prose is taut and grounded. Giving yourself away to Magic For Beginners is a bit like doing one of those high school team-building exercises in which you turn around, cross your arms, close your eyes and free-fall into a stranger's arms. The experience is a thrill and a more than a bit strange, but rest assured: Link will guide you in and out safely every time. Highly recommended.(less)

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Mar 31, 2008 Benjamin added it

Shelves: bedside-reading

It could be that I am simply unpleasable; or that these stories would have tickled the part of me that enjoys clever writing had I simply read them at the right time. But as it is, this book was a real grind for me to get through.

It could have been the clever turns-of-phrase that exposed rather than hid a certain hollowness of feeling at the core of these stories. (Or is this just an effect of writing about characters who are numb or inarticulate or vaguely longing or just plain vague?) It could...more

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Jul 15, 2008 Thomas rated it 5 of 5 stars

I marvel at Kelly Link's raw imaginative power, darker than a Grimm fairy tale, fluid as dream.

Here's me trying to explain one of the stories to my wife: "You see there's this convenience store next to a place called the Ausible Chasm, where zombies live. The zombies come into the store but never buy anything. A woman named Charlie drives past on her way to the animal shelter. Her car is filled with the ghosts of dogs she has killed."

Here's my wife's reaction: "Hmmm..."

If you grew up loving fant...more

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Jan 25, 2008 Kathryn rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People who think any book is enhanced by zombie and Lovecraft references (and really, don't we all?)

Shelves: fantastical, short-stories

Some of the stories were pretty amazing--the kind you finish and immediately want to start again to see what you might have missed. I like the air of mystery and missing-ness, the way she fills the pages but leaves spaces inbetween for the imagination. I'd read some of these in anthologies. There were stories I loved (The Hortlak, Some Zombie Contingency Plans, The Faery Handbag), some I liked a lot but didn't connect to as well (The Great Divorce), some that didn't work for me (The Lull) and on...more

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Jan 23, 2009 Nicole rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: do-you-believe-in-magic

The stories in this book ooze creativity and imagination, which I'm generally a sucker for. There's a risk, though, in straying too far from traditional lines, in that the stories still have to connect for the reader on some level strongly enough for us to be willing to let go of the fact that we're being asked to take this bizarre world at face value.

For all of the creative elements, many of them very well-rendered (zombies really are vastly under-utilized in contemporary fiction, and the vill...more

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Apr 26, 2013 Andrea Ika rated it 3 of 5 stars

About the book
Kelly Link (Author)
First Edition
Original Language: English
Publisher: Small Beer Press
Format ebook
Publication Date: 2005
Page Count: 272

Synopsis
Magic for Beginners is Kelly Link’s eagerly anticipated and critically acclaimed follow-up to her beloved debut, Stranger Things Happen . “Cumulatively weirder and wiser” ( The Believer ), this new story collection riffs on zombies, marriage, witches, superheroes, haunted convenience stores, and weekly apocalyptic poker parties, among other t...more

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Mar 22, 2013 Gail Gauthier rated it 4 of 5 stars

I just saw this book on a list and remembered that I'd read it. It appears I liked it quite a bit back in 2008.

"Now, Magic for Beginners is a collection of what might be described as weird ass short stories. And I mean that in the best possible way. I will say right up front that they tend to be the kinds of short stories that I finish reading and go, "Ah, what?" There may be an epiphany thing going on here, and I find that with those kinds of stories I often don't share the main character's rev...more

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Mar 16, 2013 Jack rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy

Comparing this to her previous collection is inevitable for anyone who's read both, as there isn't much else out there to compare Link's work to. She's not just a fantasy writer, she's a surrealist, as I (probably mis-) understand the term. But these stories are more grounded in human experience than Stranger Things Happen. A couple of the stories have characters who seem emotionally disconnected from their surroundings - Lull, Stone Animals - but for the most part the people in the stories are...more

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Feb 11, 2013 Sean Endress rated it 4 of 5 stars

Taken from my Amazon review

Tricky to read, but worth it, and tricky to review as well. Like other reviewers have noted, Link's "Magic For Beginners" holds deep complexity under a deceptively simple guise. Her stories certainly are "strange", and have more than hints of the absolutely absurd. If the Mad Hatter's not your thing, your money would be better spent elsewhere.

Those who are familiar with Link's work will find more of the same, or at least similar in style. Those who are not will find st...more

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Feb 02, 2013 Marc Weidenbaum added it

This collection of short stories by Kelly Link takes its title from one of its best, a tale that seems to simultaneously dismember and celebrate fandom of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There are stories here that are so deep in meta and/or fantasy that they're too rich for my blood, and it's on par with China Miéville at times in terms of fiction that's as much if not more about the beauty of its language as about the story the language is purportedly serving. Link's perception of story as something...more

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Jan 25, 2013 Joshua Zucker rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was a fascinatingly weird book. A few of the stories I really loved -- I'd read a novel-sized expansion of them for sure -- but most of them were just weird in ways that didn't appeal quite as much. I don't much love the sort of storytelling with the interjections of the "I" of the storyteller and the "you" of the reader; maybe Cat Valente's _Girl Who_ books would be a rare exception, but to me it mostly works there because of the lighter humor whereas these stories tend to be much more dar...more

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Jan 15, 2013 Linsey Duncan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I’m not a great fan of Kelly Link’s first short story collection, Stranger Things Have Happened. Or, I should say, I wasn’t a great fan of about half of it. She’s a fabulous prose stylist, always, but some of the stories read like surreal worlds populated by chess pieces being moved from odd situation to odd situation. Some of the stories read both morose and a little pointless, all unhappy ciphers with narratives that began and ended and just drifted. Magic for Beginners is more rooted. This is...more

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Oct 19, 2012 Rebecca rated it 1 of 5 stars

I've only got so much patience for surrealist storytelling, so maybe this was not the anthology for me. The early stories in the collection are the kind of dream-logic-based oddities that, when you stumble upon them surrounded by other writers' work, are interesting, if a little unsatisfying in their lack of conclusion. For example, when Eastern European refugees hide in a magical handbag and a wayward boyfriend makes off with it, the idea is clever and the writing both fantastic and absurd. But...more I've only got so much patience for surrealist storytelling, so maybe this was not the anthology for me. The early stories in the collection are the kind of dream-logic-based oddities that, when you stumble upon them surrounded by other writers' work, are interesting, if a little unsatisfying in their lack of conclusion. For example, when Eastern European refugees hide in a magical handbag and a wayward boyfriend makes off with it, the idea is clever and the writing both fantastic and absurd. But each story seems progressively more self-indulgent. I can tolerate some non-linear storytelling, unexplained fantastic elements, the random insertion of zombies who lack all stereotypical characteristics of zombiness. But not altogether. In the later stories, even a pretense of causality is abandoned as characters very names change from paragraph to paragraph without explanation. There are bursts of brilliance all over the page, with startling concepts and wry asides, but the stream-of-consciousness suggests more the ramblings of someone who's high than the discipline of a professional writer. Each ends abruptly, a post-modern cop-out in which the author has finished the part of the story that interested her and then abandoned her characters without an ending. (Yes, I realize that this is a deliberate stylistic choice that's currently fashionable. I also think the literary scene's obsession with ignoring endings is self-indulgent to an extreme.) To be honest, I have a lot of trouble remembering which story contained what--they all kind of blend into each other, since none end and at no point does any event influence what happens later.

I'm reminded of many of the works of Grant Morrison--a million fascinating ideas swirling around the page, and a lack of an editor to chose three, sit the author down, and say "no, stop adding ideas--take these three and make an actual story out of them. Beginning, middle, end. You can even write it out of order. But stop adding things and finish what you started."

I usually reserve a one for something that I just cannot understand how it was published. Here, I do understand. This is literary wanking in genre form. It turns out that when you add enough zombies and time travel and the Devil to modern literary conventions, you end up with something that's nearly unreadable.

Perhaps I am too harsh. The ideas and the language really do sing. The question really does become how interested you are in story over style. For me personally, though, these feel rather like listening to someone recount their incoherent dream from last night.(less)

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Jun 14, 2012 Jessie rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was a toughie. Again, in case I wasn't clear before: I do not like short stories. As my good friend Sarah would say, I like to have a long-term relationship with smy characters. But, ANOTHER good friend (whose taste in books differ significantly from mine, although his love of books does not) insisted that I should read this, because some of the stories reminded him of Buffy (the Vampire Slayer) (also a shared love). And I can see it - I hate magical realism and mostly don't do fantasy, but...more

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Oct 05, 2010 Cedar rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories, weird, american

I love Kelly Links short story collections. Yes there is a couple of repetitions (if you have read "Pretty Monsters") however if you haven't read the stories in awhile, its nice to reacquaint with old and distant friends; they are always worth it.

Now for the review...
Kelly writes with a style that is reminisce of peep shows. The nineteen-forties kind, not the today's big flash; all over. No, they have the intricacies of a fan dance, a flutter here, a tease there, and it doesn't matter that the...more

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Sep 07, 2009 Phoebe rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: funtasy, loved-it

I usually enjoy being unsettled by writers; when reading a skin-crawlingly creepy Stephen King novel, or spooky and sexual and gross alien sex story by Octavia Butler, I enjoy the little shivers that run up-and-down my arms. Unfortunately, though I was frequently unsettled by the stories in Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners, it wasn't always a good kind of unsettled.

Link's tales ranged from nearly straight-forward fiction (the title story) to extremely surreal and dreamlike vignettes ("The Hortla...more I usually enjoy being unsettled by writers; when reading a skin-crawlingly creepy Stephen King novel, or spooky and sexual and gross alien sex story by Octavia Butler, I enjoy the little shivers that run up-and-down my arms. Unfortunately, though I was frequently unsettled by the stories in Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners, it wasn't always a good kind of unsettled.

Link's tales ranged from nearly straight-forward fiction (the title story) to extremely surreal and dreamlike vignettes ("The Hortlak") and occupied nearly every space in the continuum between these extremes. I was least comfortable with the stories that fell somewhere in the middle--like "Lull", the tale of a poker game that abruptly becomes something about time travel and the devil halfway through, or "Stone Animals", a Year's Best winner which shoehorns supernatural elements (I think?) into a domestic story. That one reminded me quite a bit of House of Leaves, which essentially told the same story (family moves into a new house where something strange is happening) in a way that was simultaneously more affecting and--and I never thought I'd say this about House of Leaves--more straight-forward.

My problem with these stories is that Link seems to find it unnecessary to establish any sort of rules for their fantastic elements. They have a slippery quality that I found vertigo-inducing rather than thrilling. In stories like "Catskin" or "The Hortlak" the surreal elements work because they're clearly part of the rules of both the universe-at-hand and the story. But, when she casually mentions that the characters in "Magic for Beginners" are fictional television characters, despite the fact that they otherwise seems completely grounded in our reality, I couldn't help but wonder: Why? To what end? How is the story enhanced by this? Unfortunately, those were questions that remained unaddressed.

Similarly unsettling was Link's tendency not just to leave stories open-ended, but to end them at the absolutely worse time, often introducing new elements into the story in the same breath. There's no anticipating the endings here, and by the last story I read, I came to dread the last few pages, despite the fact I'd enjoyed the process of reading.

These are issues of control, I think, and it's a shame--Link is clearly a strong writer. Her characters are vivid and her universes believable, but her stories would be a more satisfying read if she could stay true to either.(less)

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May 07, 2009 Whitaker rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, short-stories, 2009-read

It's somewhat unfair to put this as read, since I haven't read all the stories in it. But I'd read enough to know that it wasn't really my cup of tea. That's entirely a subjective reaction and could be as much due to what my expectations were. It's like putting an olive in your mouth thinking that it's a grape - the shock puts you off even if the olive is perfectly good for what it is.

When I bought this, it was shelved under the Fantasy section. I was expecting Fantasy a la Charles de Lint and...more

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About Kelly Link

Kelly Link is an American author of short stories born in 1969. Her stories might be described as slipstream or magic realism: sometimes a combination of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, and realism.

Books by Kelly Link

Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories

The Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet

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“When Carleton was three
months old, Henry had realized that they’d misunderstood something.
Babies weren’t babies—they were land mines; bear traps; wasp nests. They
were a noise, which was sometimes even not a noise, but merely a listening
for a noise; they were a damp, chalky smell; they were the heaving, jerky,
sticky manifestation of not-sleep. Once Henry had stood and watched
Carleton in his crib, sleeping peacefully. He had not done what he wanted
to do. He had not bent over and yelled in Carleton’s ear. Henry still hadn’t
forgiven Carleton, not yet, not entirely, not for making him feel that way.” — 3 people liked it

“The Customer isn't always right. Sometimes the customer is an asshole. That's the first rule of retail.” — 2 people liked it

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