Title: Magic for
Beginners
Author: Kelly
Link
Publisher: Mariner
Books
Publication Date: September
5, 2006
Genre: Fantasy
Reviewed by: Angie
Edwards
My rating: 4/5
SUMMARY
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 front lawn. This proves just one of several benign
but inexplicable phenomena that begin to pull apart the family newly moved into
the house as surely as a more sinister supernatural influence might. The title
story beautifully captures the unpredictable potential of teenage lives through
its account of a group of adolescent schoolfriends whose experiences subtly
parallel events in a surreal TV fantasy series. Zombies serve as the focus for
a young man's anxieties about his future in "Some Zombie Contingency
Plans" and offer suggestive counterpoint to the lives of two convenience
store clerks who serve them in "The Hortlak." Not only does Link find
fresh perspectives from which to explore familiar premises, she also forges
ingenious connections between disparate images and narrative approaches to
suggest a convincing alternate logic that shapes the worlds of her highly
original fantasies.
REVIEW
Picture my face wearing one big question mark
like the one you’ll see on a cartoon character. Can you see it? Well then,
let’s get started.
The Faery Handbag
Can you believe that an entire village,
including mythical creatures such as mermaids and dragons, can hide and survive
in a magical handbag for hundreds of years? Would I lie to you? Maybe. Maybe
not. But would Genevieve’s book-stealing, scrabble-loving grandmother who
speaks fluent Baldeziwurleki lie to you about it? Maybe. Maybe not. You decide
what you want to believe.
The Hortlak
Eric and Batu works the night shift at the
All-Night Convenience store where humans and zombies shop and can pay for their
purchases with money or anything they feel is worth the product they buy.
Charley’s job is to put dogs to sleep. It just so happens that both Eric and
Batu are in love with her. All three these characters were rather nonsensical,
and the plot didn’t make sense to me either. If The Hortlak is meant to be a metaphor for something, I didn’t get
it. Still, the prose was done beautifully and gives it a whimsical feel. And even though I don’t like her at all,
respect to you, Ms Link, for mentioning South African-born actress, Charlize
Theron. (It’s Charlize I don’t like, just to be clear).
I still might not know what the hell a Hortlak
is, but don’t hate me because I’m beautiful, okay?
The Cannon
If I thought The Hortlak didn’t make any sense, The Cannon makes even less sense if that’s possible. How much can
there be said about a cannon, right? Well, Ms Link manages an entire essay
about a cannon – gorgeous prose and all – and I’m sure it’s a metaphor for
something or the other, but I guess I must be very slow today because, again, I
didn’t get it. This reads like something that should be dissected in an English
Lit college class to find all the hidden meanings that can be interpreted. As
with the previous short, I lost myself in the beautiful writing and was left
with lots to ponder, trying to figure out what the heck the cannon represents.
Stone Animals
After the peculiarity of the previous two
novellas, it was a relief to move back to the land of normal with, Stone Animals, or as normal as it gets
in this short story compilation. I kinda liked the characters in this one. The
kids, Carleton and Tilly, are unnervingly creepy, and they have a cat called,
King Spanky. The parents, Henry and Catherine, with a new baby on the way, have
a very complicated, yet loving, marriage. But what I liked most about it was
how realistically their marriage is portrayed. Then there’s the new house they
move into. And the rabbits. Things are beings whispered about this house by the
locals, and really, what the friggity frack is up with all the rabbits?
Catskin
It is made clear right at the beginning of Catskin that if you’re looking for a
happy ending to this story, you shouldn’t read it. I, of course, am all for
unconventional endings, so I continued reading. I adore cats and there was no
way I was going to miss out on a story with cats in it. Catskin is a little hard to explain though. All I’m going to say is
that it’s about cats, witches, children, princes, princesses, time, children
living under houses, cats walking upright, a cat suit, red ants, and...it’s all
very, very bizarre. Another metaphor maybe?
Some Zombie Contingency Plans
OK, there are still a couple more short
stories, and I bet they’re all as weird as this one turned out to be. It seems
to be the theme here. So, because I’m getting tired of the term weird /
strange, and I’m assuming you are too, I just won’t use that word again to
describe the rest of this anthology. Deal?
Now, on to zombie contingency plans we go.
Here are two questions for you to contemplate. One. Do you think zombies are
attracted to suburbs the same way tornadoes are attracted to trailer parks?
Secondly, could it be that they are attracted to the aforementioned suburbs
because the windows of all the houses in these suburbs drive them nuts? It
doesn’t really matter, but those are two relatively good questions, don’t you
think? No? Well, Soap, the main character who is an escaped prisoner, seems to
think so. This crazy short story is also
about art, icebergs, and of course, zombies.
The Great Divorce
Let me try and make sense of this. There once
was a man, in a time when the living could marry the dead (or vice versa), who
married a dead woman, who bore him three children – all dead – and after twelve
years of marriage he suspected she’s having an affair. Apparently, divorcing
the dead isn’t as common as marrying the dead. The children communicates with
their father via an Ouija board, asking him to take them to Disneyland, because
divorce is always hardest on the kids...aaaaaaand several pages later, after
trying to arrange the themes of divorce, the living, the dead, mediums, and Disneyland
into one neat sensible picture, I was so lost I felt I needed a strong drink
just to help me get back to reality. And no, I don’t drink. All I got from this
is that divorcing a ghost is as difficult and painful as divorcing a living
person.
I promised earlier I won’t use
the-word-that-shall-not-be-repeated, remember?
Magic for Beginners
My
head’s still a-spinnin’.
Wait. What?
Lull
Why do people sometimes ask: “May I ask you a
question”? Don’t they realize that by doing that they’re already asking a
question? What if your answer is: “No, you may not ask me a question”. What
then? Can they take back the unintended question? It boggles the mind. It does.
Like Lull. Lull is hard to explain, but simple to understand...if you’re high
on some kind of hallucinogenic – which I assure you is a foreign concept to me.
Therefore, I can’t tell you what it’s about or what the point of it is, but
here are a few keywords that stuck with me which might give you an indication
of what to expect: trampoline, evil spirits, Tarzan door, sleepwalking, pepper,
drunk peacocks, booby traps, lopsided haircuts.
See what I mean?
It’s also about the devil and a cheerleader,
friendship, marriage, houses, teenagers, and divorce – I think.
The line that got me laughing:
What’s
a nice alien like you doing in a galaxy like this?
In the context of the story, that line was a
classic.
There you have it, folks. What felt like being
trapped in an endless tornado of crazy confusion that left my head spinning (yes,
like in The Exorcist), we’ve FINALLY
reached the end.
The thing about these short stories is that
they are all unique and incredibly you-know-what. The writing is just lovely,
and whether the stories made sense to me or not, they were quite an experience
to read. I don’t think this anthology would be everybody’s taste. You
definitely have to be in a certain frame of mind to be able to fully absorb
this kind of writing style. But I would recommend it without hesitation to
anyone looking for something that is way out there and miles from the norm. Go
ahead, give it a chance! I’ll wait for you on the other side, pointing and
laughing, when you come stumbling out of this weird-ass anthology
hurricane. That is, if you’re brave
enough to read it all the way to the end, muahahahahaha!
ABOUT the AUTHOR
Kelly Link's debut
collection, Stranger Things Happen, was a Firecracker nominee, a Village Voice
Favorite Book and a Salon Book of the Year -- Salon called the collection
"...an alchemical mixture of Borges, Raymond Chandler, and "Buffy the
Vampire Slayer." Stories from the collection have won the Nebula, the James
Tiptree Jr., and the World Fantasy Awards. Her second collection, Magic for
Beginners, was a Book Sense pick (and a Best of Book Sense pick); and selected
for best of the year lists by Time Magazine, Salon, Boldtype, Village Voice,
San Francisco Chronicle, and The Capitol Times. It was published in paperback
by Harcourt. Kelly is an editor for the Online Writing Workshop and has been a
reader and judge for various literary awards. With Gavin J. Grant and Ellen
Datlow she edits The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror (St. Martin's Press). She
also edited the anthology, Trampoline. Kelly has visited a number of schools
and workshops including Stonecoast in Maine, Washington University, Yale, Bard
College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, Brookdale Community College, Brookdale, NJ,
Lenoir-Rhyne College, Hickory, NC, the Imagination Workshop at Cleveland State
University, New England Institute of Art & Communications, Brookline, MA,
Clarion East at Michigan State University, Clarion West in Seattle, WA, and
Clarion South in Brisbane, Australia. Kelly lives in Northampton, MA. She
received her BA from Columbia University and her MFA from the University of
North Carolina at Greensboro. Kelly and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, publish a
twice-yearly zine, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet -- as well as books -- as
Small Beer Press.
Follow us with:
