bettyehollands
Written on Oct 28, 2021
Enjoyable but not as good as Magic for Beginners, which I read right before and gave 4 stars. Similar mix of intriguing stories, slightly lower highs.
"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 "Link's stories defy explanation, or at least, brief summary, instead working on the plane between dream and cognitive dissonance. They are true to themselves: witty, beautiful, funny, and startling."-Rain Taxi "Link uses the nonsensical to illuminate truth, blurring the distinctions between the mundane and the fantastic to tease out the underlying meanings of modern life."-Booklist "The 11 fantasies in this first collection from rising star Link are so quirky and exuberantly imagined that one is easily distracted from their surprisingly serious underpinnings of private pain and emotional estrangement." -Publishers Weekly Kelly Link's collection of stories, Stranger Things Happen, really scores. -Daniel Mendelsohn, New York Magazine "A tremendously appealing book, and lovers of short fiction should fall over themselves getting out the door to find a copy."
-Washington Post Book World "Stylistic pyrotechnics light up a bizarre but emotionally truthful landscape. Link's a writer to watch." -Kirkus Reviews "A set of stories that are by turns dazzling, funny, scary, and sexy, but only when they're not all of these at once. Kelly Link has strangeness, charm and spin to spare. Writers better than this don't happen." -Karen Joy Fowler "Kelly Link is probably the best short story writer currently out there, in any genre or none. She puts one word after another and makes real magic with them-funny, moving, tender, brave and dangerous. She is unique, and should be declared a national treasure, and possibly surrounded at all times by a cordon of armed marines." -Neil Gaiman "Kelly Link is the exact best and strangest and funniest short story writer on earth that you have never heard of at the exact moment you are reading these words and making them slightly inexact. Now pay for the book." -Jonathan Lethem The eleven stories in Kelly Link's debut collection are funny, spooky, and smart. They all have happy endings. They were all especially written for you. A Best of the Year pick from Salon.com, Locus, The Village Voice, and San Francisco Chronicle.
Includes Nebula, World Fantasy, and Tiptree award-winning stories. Kelly Link is the author of three collections of short fiction Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, and Pretty Monsters. Her short stories have won three Nebula, a Hugo, and a World Fantasy Award. She was born in Miami, Florida, and once won a free trip around the world by answering the question "Why do you want to go through the world?" ("Because you can't go through it.") Link lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, run Small Beer Press, co-edit the fantasy half of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and play ping-pong. In 1996 they startd the occasional zine Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet.
- ISBN10 1458725278
- ISBN13 9781458725271
- Publish Date 30 December 2010 (first published 1 January 2001)
- Publish Status Inactive
- Out of Print 8 February 2014
- Publish Country CA
- Imprint ReadHowYouWant
- Edition Large Print 16 pt
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 386
- Language English
Reviews
jamiereadthis
Written on Oct 7, 2010
Like a kid who doesn’t believe in anything, ghost stories are the best.
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Sept 2009: If you ever wanted me to read a book, any book, you would promise me this: you would promise fairy tales and cautionary tales, dictators, extraterrestrials, amnesiacs, honeymooners, revenants and ghosts. You would promise to be seriously spooky and smart. You would also promise happy endings, bizarre and sad dreams, and somehow, Nancy Drew.
“Every story contains a secret prize,” promises the dust jacket. “Each story was written especially for you.”