Stranger Things Happen

Rating:
Summary: Strange...
Review: "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 catogorise 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 the text - makes it easier to adapt. Her writing seems to permeate right into one's head, letting the reader formulate each story by themselves while being gently urged on by Link. She guides, but does not dictate, the reader. As a result, one makes each story one's own: This compounds how generally creepy her writing is.

The stories are also puncutated with truly odd characters. In "Water off a Black Dog's Back," the boy's girlfriend's father is a bizarre character. He is lacking a nose, and therefore replaces it with a prosthesis according to circumstnace -- sometimes a wooden one, sometimes a steel one. Link again keeps her writing somewhat vague, but defined enough to paint a rather striking - and oddly frightening - picture of rural life under her twisted pen.

The fact that this is Link's first book shows, however. While her writing is strong (she shows remarkable talant), there are immature aspects to it, as well. Her stories can be somewhat "plotless" - they are more like literary sketches of disturbing scenarios. Although, this is also what renders her writing so captivating: She makes a story out of some strange event. She does not present a problem to be solved, a climax, a resolution. It's almost as if she leaves that to the reader, choosing instead to lay the groundwork for one's mind to grind away at -- as a reader, we torment ourselves thinking more of what Link has written than what is actually on the page.

Kudos to Link for her uncanny ability to turn the familiar into the frightening. Her writing conveys a sense of uneasiness, she manages to make the most normal circumstances into the most disturbing. She is an excellent, captivating writer.

Rating:
Summary: Strange...
Review: "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 catogorise 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 the text - makes it easier to adapt. Her writing seems to permeate right into one's head, letting the reader formulate each story by themselves while being gently urged on by Link. She guides, but does not dictate, the reader. As a result, one makes each story one's own: This compounds how generally creepy her writing is.

The stories are also puncutated with truly odd characters. In "Water off a Black Dog's Back," the boy's girlfriend's father is a bizarre character. He is lacking a nose, and therefore replaces it with a prosthesis according to circumstnace -- sometimes a wooden one, sometimes a steel one. Link again keeps her writing somewhat vague, but defined enough to paint a rather striking - and oddly frightening - picture of rural life under her twisted pen.

The fact that this is Link's first book shows, however. While her writing is strong (she shows remarkable talant), there are immature aspects to it, as well. Her stories can be somewhat "plotless" - they are more like literary sketches of disturbing scenarios. Although, this is also what renders her writing so captivating: She makes a story out of some strange event. She does not present a problem to be solved, a climax, a resolution. It's almost as if she leaves that to the reader, choosing instead to lay the groundwork for one's mind to grind away at -- as a reader, we torment ourselves thinking more of what Link has written than what is actually on the page.

Kudos to Link for her uncanny ability to turn the familiar into the frightening. Her writing conveys a sense of uneasiness, she manages to make the most normal circumstances into the most disturbing. She is an excellent, captivating writer.

Rating:
Summary: Yes they do...
Review: ...but I'd rather they didn't to me! This very odd collection of very odd stories was presented to me by a student who knows my weakness for the weird because she "wanted to know what I thought of it". Well. I don't regret reading the book, but I fear I may have nightmares about some of the chapters for a while to come. Some of these stories are quite funny, others almost heartbreaking, all of them have a real "edge" to them that keeps you turning pages while at the same time feeling that you probably don't want to be caught with this book. Who will like this? Fans of Roald Dahl almost certainly, there is the same use of a "kicker" at the end of several stories that makes you say "OmiGosh, I can't believe an author would do THAT to his/her characters..." Who else? There is more than a hint of a sort of modern "film noir" tone, I can see these stories very easily in black & white rather than in colour. Beyond that, it is hard to say. IF you get into the book it will be easy to finish it, but there may be a threshold of weirdness here that will shut out a lot of people. DON'T read this late at night and at home alone, there is a sort of horror attached that is much more effective than that found in more popular authors.

Rating:
Summary: Yes they do...
Review: ...but I'd rather they didn't to me! This very odd collection of very odd stories was presented to me by a student who knows my weakness for the weird because she "wanted to know what I thought of it". Well. I don't regret reading the book, but I fear I may have nightmares about some of the chapters for a while to come. Some of these stories are quite funny, others almost heartbreaking, all of them have a real "edge" to them that keeps you turning pages while at the same time feeling that you probably don't want to be caught with this book. Who will like this? Fans of Roald Dahl almost certainly, there is the same use of a "kicker" at the end of several stories that makes you say "OmiGosh, I can't believe an author would do THAT to his/her characters..." Who else? There is more than a hint of a sort of modern "film noir" tone, I can see these stories very easily in black & white rather than in colour. Beyond that, it is hard to say. IF you get into the book it will be easy to finish it, but there may be a threshold of weirdness here that will shut out a lot of people. DON'T read this late at night and at home alone, there is a sort of horror attached that is much more effective than that found in more popular authors.

Rating:
Summary: The temptation...
Review: ...is to try to be as imaginative and unusual as the book itself. However, it would take me a week and about fifty revisions, and I'm very sleepy. So:

Kelly Link is really good. Read this book. Buy it first.

Rating:
Summary: The temptation...
Review: ...is to try to be as imaginative and unusual as the book itself. However, it would take me a week and about fifty revisions, and I'm very sleepy. So:

Kelly Link is really good. Read this book. Buy it first.

Rating:
Summary: Smart, Funny, Sad and Strange
Review: I don't expect to read a stronger collection of fantasy, horror or magic realist fiction this year, and probably not next one, either. Kelly Link has been compared to Neil Gaiman, Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson and Jonathan Carroll, but ultimately she's elegantly and ineffably herself.

This attractively designed trade paperback includes the deeply chilling and World-Fantasy-Award-winning "The Specialist's Hat" (the only ghost story to actually frighten me in the last two decades), the more quietly disturbing "Carnation, Lilly, Lilly, Rose" and "Water Off a Black Dog's Back," the classical fantasy tropes of "Flying Lessons" and "Travels With the Snow Queen," and the indescribable "The Girl Detective" (about a Girl Detective, Twelve Dancing Bank-Robbing Princesses, albino alligators, and the recurring theme of a journey to the Underworld, which we are told is "like the back of your closet, behind all those racks of clothes that you don't wear any more"). Two of these eleven stories are previously unpublished; the Science Fictional (well, kind of) "Most of My Friends are Two-Thirds Water" and the odd, funny, and devastatingly sad "Louise's Ghost," the final page of which I can't read without my eyes blurring.

Not surprisingly, the newest stories are more polished than the earlier ones, and her voice is one that will always be evolving. I can't imagine her today using a phrase like "his teeth are sharp and eager as knives" (from "Flying Lessons," which despite that rare lapse is still marvelously well-written, more so than anything I'm ever likely to do). She began terrific and just keeps getting better and better. Damn her.

Rating:
Summary: Really different
Review: I read the review of this book on Salon.com and just had to rush out and buy this book. For a book published by an independent press, I was very impressed with the physicality of this book, how it is put together, the cool illustration on the front from "The Girl Detective." Kelly Link is really different from just about every modern writer out there. As well, each story in this collection is different from each other. Her style is really diverse, and impossible to really describe fully, but she always takes you in new directions that you wouldn't expect. Some of the stories affected me more than others, but there was not one in the collection that bored me. And for those of you who grew up on Nancy Drew like I did, the last story will really amuse you. If you are sick of all those books now that all seem as if they've been written by a computer or a room full of random monkeys (...), you should definitely check out Kelly Link.

Rating:
Summary: wow.
Review: I was astonished by most of the stories in this book- literal: dropped jaw, that was amazing, how can i become friends with this woman so she can tell me stories at night before I go to bed?

Kelly Link manages to weave fairy tales, the paranormal, modern relationships, aliens and other bizzarities (I know that's not a word, but it should be) into some of the freshest, coolest fiction I've read in a long time.

If you're looking for unsettling ghost stories, cousins who make themselves disappear, women that travel the underworld Orpheus style with twist on top of twist. This IS the book for you. (Even if you didn't know you were looking for those things.)

I'd hate to go into great detail. It would ruin the magic of these incredible stories.

If you like Aimee Bender, Stacey Richter, and/or Neil Gaiman during his Sandman days. Read no further, buy this book.

Rating:
Summary: An honest reader out of me.
Review: I will get two copies of this Kelly Link collection. One, as a proper supporter of what is unquestionably hoped to still comprise the absolute beginning of an reading affair that I will pledge to propagate through the gamut of fiscal applause and any other means I can, in future, summon. One in which I will undoubtedly take upon myself the mantle my duty as a fan, and the noble deployment of my part in the equation we share: demand.

Then an Other, taken as nothing but a gift to me, that I will carry around in my hands for weeks, draw pictures on every page of, seal together with real love and appropriate recital; laugh at, argue with, scorn and draw parallels to, rub under my thumb when I am nervous, put things under I don't want to blow away, chip and scar with cute equations, clamp my tiny flowers in, dog-ear and abuse, entertain myself by birdishly flapping around my head--slap together hard to startle real birds--use to draw not-very-long straight lines, write sideways poetry on, color all of the O and R and D holes in with a ball-point, wax grandiose theory about the cabal of pagination around, set furniture and candles on to keep them tilted correctly, warp with wine and rain and bubble bath steam, discolor with cigarette smoke and a few rings from the bottom of rocks glasses. One that is a gift that will incite, in the back of my head, the plot to somehow return. A book I will not sell short by finishing with the mere reading, I promise.