Stranger Things Happen
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Stranger Things Happen

4.01 of 5 stars 4.01  ·  rating details  ·  1,538 ratings  ·  250 reviews

"An alchemical mix of Borges, Raymond Chandler and Buffy the Vampire Slayer."-Salon.com (Best of the Year)

"A delightful collection."-Cleveland Plain Dealer

"My favorite fantasy writer."-Alan Cheuse, All Things Considered

The eleven stories in Kelly Link's debut collection are funny, spooky, and smart. They all have happy endings. They w

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Paperback, 266 pages
Published July 1st 2001 by Small Beer Press
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Community Reviews

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Punk
Short Stories. This was stamped "science fiction" by the library, but these short, fantastic stories have more in common with magical realism and retold fairy tales than science- or even speculative fiction. Plenty of ghosts, being dead, being haunted, dating a son of Zeus, searching for the lover that the Snow Queen stole away -- that sort of thing.

Written with a light hand, these stories are bittersweet, spooky, absurd, crazy, and freeing. Each one is perfectly self-cont...more
Mike (the Paladin)
I sort of feel I should apologize for this rating. I picked this up on the strength of some good ratings and reviews here. But I just didn't like this book. I don't mean to be hard to get along with, but I found the stories rather silly.

Again, I'm sorry if you like this book and please enjoy...

I wanted to like this book. Based on what I'd read I picked it up ready for some enjoyable weird stories. The first one left me cold...the "dead man" exploring his situa...more
Debnance
A book of surreal short stories that would vie with Hurakami for the strangest stories I’ve ever read. Unlike Hurakami, however, there is no Kafkaesque feeling of alienation; the odd people in these stories seem generally content with the craziness of their lives. What kind of stories are these? Here’s a list from the back cover: “The girl detective must go to the underworld to solve the case of the tap-dancing bank robbers. A librarian falls in love with a girl whose father collects artificial ...more
Justine
I picked up this book because Amazon told me I would like it. Being that I trust their algorithm more than I trust most of my family members, I did it.

Kelly Link's collection of short stories ran the gamut between being successful and kind of pointless. While the concept is interesting: take folktales, fairy tales, ghost stories, etc. and smush with contemporary narrators or situations. Hijinks and fun imagery ensue.

The stories I found to be the most successful were those t...more
Ori
Ori rated it 3 of 5 stars
This book will sleep with you on the first date. Then when you wake up beside it in the early morning you will spend some serious time considering whether it was great, or whether it would have been better to wait a bit.

For me it was a bit wild, which I like, from a book, but also a little cold, a little impersonal. This book may have issues with nymphomania. It's definately ready and willing to give you a thrill, but even though you've spent some time with it, it still doesn't qu...more
Debbie (Readerbuzz) Nance
A book of surreal short stories that would vie with Hurakami for the strangest stories I’ve ever read. Unlike Hurakami, however, there is no Kafkaesque feeling of alienation; the odd people in these stories seem generally content with the craziness of their lives. What kind of stories are these? Here’s a list from the back cover: “The girl detective must go to the underworld to solve the case of the tap-dancing bank robbers. A librarian falls in love with a girl whose father collects artificial ...more
Leah
Leah rated it 4 of 5 stars
"Stranger Things Happen" is Kelly Link's freshman work of fiction. Within it are eleven exquisitely crafted short stories which range from weird to the truly bizarre. It is difficult to categorize Link's writing, as it seems to straddle science fiction and fantasy, narrative and fiction, real and unreal.

"The Specialist's Hat" is really one of the spookiest stories I have ever read. It is loosely written (as are many of the stories), which - rather than impeding th...more
Debbie
Rather brilliant, I'm sure, stories that were horror and/or fantasy themed, but in Link's attempt to be literary I'm afraid she lost me on a number of the tales. There were a few that I quite fancied (the Snow Queen one, in particular) but the ones that left me scratching my head outnumbered them. I recommend you give it a try, especially considering it's published free under a Creative Commons License. Someone more sophisticated than me would probably appreciate it more.
Kirsten
I liked this book, but I wasn't expecting to have to work as hard as I did. When I pick up James Joyce or Thomas Pynchon (which I don't...I'm just giving examples of non-linear, postmodern, absurd, abstract prose) I expect to have a little trouble understanding the themes, the characters or even the plot. I did not think that picking up a collection of short stories by someone I've never heard of would have me so flummoxed. Maybe I didn't read carefully enough? That's very possible. Or mayb...more
Autumn
Autumn rated it 3 of 5 stars
Kelly Link is very hit or miss for me. Some of the stories in this collection are amazing, and I was floored by them- particularly "Water off a black dog's back." But, for the most part, they were pretty dissapointing and I only skimmed through many of them. I thought many of the stories felt like they were trying too hard to be deep or have all the right references. It seems like her best stories in this collection were the simple, straightforward ones.
Alana
If you suspect that you might be an ordinary person, one without creativity or imagination... well, then Stranger Things Happen might not appeal to you to begin with, but it certainly won't make you feel any better about your imaginative state. Even if you think you are a fairly creative person, it's hard to believe that you could come close the level of the fantastic and fascinating that Kelly Link achieves in these eleven short stories. A strange combination of fantasy and very modern realit...more
Ian
Ian rated it 2 of 5 stars
The only reason I finished this book is because I read Magic for beginners first and I liked that one slightly more than this collection.
In the end, I guess Link just isn't for me. I like my stories to make sense, to have some internal logic and structure I can follow and, possibly, an ending or a hint of an explanation my mind can work upon.
Link's stories instead feel to me more like a dream - scenes, images, moments where time slows down like molasses or jumps all over the place,...more
Thalia M
Thalia M rated it 5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for: supernatural grrrls; basically anyone who is awesome
Shelves: surreal, shortstories
I was drawn in by the first story, "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose." If I told you it was about a horny dead guy's attempts to communicate with his wife, that would be like saying "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was about fairies n'shit. It was so good it made me cry and curse the heavens because I can't write as well as Kelly Link. But my favorite is "Travels with the Snow Queen," just because I can't resist an icy slut.
Sarah Laing
I do so love Kelly Link. She is just so unique and funny and weird. And very contemporary - or at least to my eye. She is one of those writers that I wish I could write like. She has this love of fairy tales, ghost stories and pop culture that she mashes together in the most surprising ways. There are hairy ghosts trapped in cellos and tin noses, hats with teeth and girls that used to be dogs. There is even a story set in New Zealand, about an end-of-days party in a hotel in Milford Sound. I rea...more
Elena Gleason
2.5 stars. I was tempted to give this three stars, because a lot of my reaction wasn't that these stories were bad, just that they weren't for me. But boy, were they not for me.

My first exposure to Kelly Link's writing was through her YA collection Pretty Monsters: Stories. I loved it. "Magic for Beginners" is still one of my all-time favorite stories. So I was excited to read her two adult collections, this and Magic for Beginners. I started with this, her earlier collection...more
Lindsay
Lindsay rated it 3 of 5 stars
Shelves: shortstories
I am sorry. I feel guilty. I feel like I've cheated on a boyfriend. I got Pretty Monsters a while ago, but wasn't totally thrilled and decided to backtrack. Start from the beginning. I was so very excited to read Stranger Things Happen because I have faith I will adore Kelly Link, but it ended up I just didn't give it the attention it needed. I loved it as I was reading it, some passages made me sigh and hug the book close to my chest, but at the end of nearly each story I felt dissatisfie...more
Res
Res rated it 3 of 5 stars
Shelves: sff
I'm afraid there's a sameness to Link's writing. Grotesquerie, quirky refusal of all resolution. It's a delight for one story (especially when you encounter it somewhere like F&SF, surrounded by the trite and self-serious) but in a collection it quickly becomes annoying.

Favorite stories: "The Specialist's Hat," "The Girl Detective."
KG
KG rated it 4 of 5 stars
This is a fun little book of eerie and quirky short stories.

The first story ("Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose") was weird/odd...in an interesting way! A little confusing, but thought-provoking. It was pretty interesting/weird. And, it was okay enough to keep me reading the book. Kelly Link's style - exploring the bizzare - tickles my curiosity!

The 2nd story ("Water Off a Black Dog's Back") was pretty funny, at first, then it turned dark an...more
Jeff
Jeff rated it 4 of 5 stars
I liked this better than Pretty Monsters. The first few stories here had the same style-over-substance issues that I was disappointed by in her other collection, but some of the middle stories really wowed me, particularly Travels with the Snow Queen, which I very much loved. But then Louise's Ghost was a total stinker - way too precious for my tastes. I didn't read The Specialist's Hat because this story also appeared in Pretty Monsters and I had read it there, though maybe it wasn't exactly th...more
Sienna
Sienna rated it 3 of 5 stars
Shelves: 2011
As a writer I love ambiguity, but as an occasional, somewhat reluctant short story reader, it turns out that I find a consistent lack of guidance frustrating and unfulfilling. Link's stories kept me reading, sure — I enjoyed the telling and the offbeat worlds her characters inhabit, and I'll be hitting up Magic for Beginners next, but there was no rush of pleasure at each conclusion. Highlights, though, were the mythopoeic "Flying Lessons" and "Louise's Ghost," which made me...more
Nicholas
Intriguing push of the English language, but not every story works out. Sometimes you're asking yourself if it's really worth it. Louise's Death and Most of My Friends Are Two-Thirds Water are stories where her plot and her inspection of character actually feel complete at the end.
A.K.
Unabashedly girly, experimental, tender, genius. It took a few stories for me to get into Link but I think... I think I love her like I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and four day old tres leches cake with black coffee, all things sweet and sneaky and spooky.
Adam
Adam rated it 5 of 5 stars
The bizarre gene splicing of Donald Barthelme and Robert Aickman is the best description of this(maybe the short work of Gene Wolfe, Jeffrey Ford,or M.John Harrison is another comparison), joins the short list of Americans I read(god I'm pretentious)
Meg
Meg rated it 4 of 5 stars
So this was a very interesting book. Different from anything that you've probably read before. A lot of strange imagery; I likened it to poetry or an Ani DiFranco song where you sort of get the gist of what's going on and what all the emotions are but some of the specifics just mean nothing. And maybe it's because I'm a cynic, but I feel that Kelly Link put a lot of 'nothing' imagery in here as filler, as if to say 'Hmm, what's the most random thing I can think of? Oh I know. Food is like dancin...more
Glenn Zorpette
The stories are unusual and not at all predictable. But they're dull. They seem to have been written to impress critics or other authors with their strangeness. The author seems to delight in showing us how clever and creative she can be. For example, there's lots of cute but ultimately meaningless word play. Unfortunately, the stories are not compelling or engrossing at all.
Regarding its favorable reviews: I'd say there's a major "Emperor's New Clothes" effect with this book. To ...more
Arwen Downs
My parents gave me this collection of short stories a few years ago for Christmas. . . I was apprehensive, but hooked from the start. Link not only has a gift for storytelling and creates fantastic scenarios and characters, but the stories do not follow any sort of formula nor are they even necessarily set in the same worlds or eras! Also delightful (to a reader who grew up on the Red, Blue, and Yellow Fairy books) are subtle references to fairy tales and even Greek mythology in some of the st...more
eq
eq rated it 3 of 5 stars
Some of the short stories were definitely 3 star worthy while the others were forgettable. The opening story really caught my attention - death being a limbo state where you forget who you are - while the fairy tale stories definitely offered up a new twist to the traditional. I really enjoyed the Snow Queen variation. On the other hand, "My Friends are Two-Thirds Water" for some reason just creeped me out. And the last story, "The Girl Detective", was a mess to me. I couldn'...more
Anna
Kelly Link has a way of telling a story so the events are in exactly the right order - which is not necessarily chronological (see: "The Specialist's Hat"). Some of these stories have foundations in traditional fairy tales and folklore, but these stories don't follow the traditional tracks, they go in different, unexpected, and welcome new directions. Frequently explanations are not offered, things are not made explicit, you have to deduce or guess at what is going on, and it is refr...more
V.
V. rated it 3 of 5 stars
Even is I could remember my drams/nightmares well enough to craft them into stories, they wouldn't be as scary, disturbing and vivid as the stories in this collection. "The Specialist's Hat" had me checking in the closet for monsters. "Survivors Ball, or, The Donner Party" had the feel of a paranoid's bad acid trip - it was creepy in that dream-like way when you know there's danger, but can't run fast enough to escape it. "Travels with the Snow Queen" was a wonderfu...more
David Wink
This book was right on the cusp, the cusp of something I would rush to you and demand that you read. I think I'm a sucker for a Maupassant ending: a tidy little trick that throws the story into perspective. Link is surreal, but she never tries to tidy up her fiction into a moral. The stories are a series of strange things that happen. Her consistently fine humor kept me whisking through the stories with delight, but it's a somewhat empty diet. She's fantastic at what she's doing, and if it's tak...more
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Favorite & Least Favorite Stories in this book 2 26 Dec 08, 2008 04:23am  
Stranger Things Happen (ebook)
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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.
More about Kelly Link...
Magic for Beginners Pretty Monsters: Stories Steampunk! An Anthology Of Fantastically Rich And Strange Stories The Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet: Occasional Outbursts Trampoline: An Anthology

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