Magic for Beginners [Paperback]

Kelly Link (Author), Shelley Jackson (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 2006

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 things. 

 

Link’s work is truly unique. Time Out New York called her stories “cross-genre gems,” and her admirers in the literary community—from Peter Straub and Karen Joy Fowler to Alice Sebold and Michael Chabon—reflect the amazing range that makes her style so special. Call it kitchen sink magical realism: Fantastic and bizarre but funny and down to earth, there is something for everyone in Magic for Beginners.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. 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. (July 1)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

Link's second collection has a McSweeney's-like tendency to digress, but does so without irony. Whether describing witches filled with ants that carry pieces of time, or an orange-juice-colored corduroy couch that looks as if it "has just escaped from a maximum security prison for criminally insane furniture," these stories examine American middle- and lower-middle-class life from unexpected angles that mix fairy tale, science fiction, and zaniness. In Link's worlds, a village takes refuge in a magical handbag, and a convenience store serves zombies as an experiment in retail. Two stories with zombies is perhaps too many, though the first effectively marries humor and horror. Reading Link, one has a sense that sometimes a person needs to wander off for a better perspective, and sometimes a person simply needs to wander off.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; Reprint edition (September 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156031876
• ISBN-13: 978-0156031875
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #543,441 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More 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.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 37 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The year's best fiction July 13, 2005

By Kelly C. Shaw

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Kelly Link's fiction is so good it's scary, as her lyrical voice is one of the most unique and singular in literature. Her fantastical stories are inimitable reinventions of familiar genre staples (zombies, ghosts, time travel, fairy tales, and more), filtered through a keen literary eye. The fantasy elements in her stories are always underpinned by a grave reality, be it loss of innocence, coming to grief, or family strife, but not at the expense of a story's humor or levity. Somehow, Link's stories capture both the familiar and the unknown, the horror and the beauty in life. I'm not quite sure how she does it.

Magic for Beginners, Link's second collection, contains some of her most mature and accomplished stories to date. Personal favorites are "Stone Animals," a domestic ghost story that plays with gender stereotypes, "Some Zombie Contingency Plans," an unpredictable, psychological horror story, and the titular novella "Magic For Beginners," a contemporary dark fantasy story, equal parts Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Videodrome, but which ultimately defies description. I don't know if Link will ever evolve into a novelist (and as long as she keeps churning out short fiction, I won't complain), but if she does, I believe "Magic For Beginners" will be identified as a stepping stone to her eventual longer works.

It's actually unfair to single out only a few stories of this 9-story collection, since they are all of high quality (though I'm not too fond of the postmodern stylization over characterization in "The Cannon"). Other gems include "The Hortlak," a hilarious, if somber, post-apocalyptic zombie story, and "Lull," a time-travel story like no other, replete with the devil, cheerleaders, poker parties, and aliens (believe me, it works).

Another surprising element in Link's stories, given their complexity, is their accessibility, as the stories in this collection partake of traditional, page-turning storytelling. But don't get me wrong, her stories are not easy reads (they are fun reads!). Link's best stories, due to their narrative and thematic richness, demand (reward) rereading. But this is hardly a chore, because a Kelly Link story will haunt you, calling out to your waking and sleeping dreams. That's the power a perfect story can have.

Magic for Beginners, to this humble reader, is the finest collection, and arguably the finest book, to be published in 2005.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely Brilliant August 11, 2008

By gaimangirl VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Okay, so it's a silly cliche, but I'm going to use it anyway...Kelly Link is the absolute best writer that you've never heard of. Most people have no idea who she is, our bookstore doesn't even carry her books most of the time, but I think she's utterly brilliant, and she deserves to be better known. She deserves to win the Pulitzer as far as I'm concerned.

The stories in this collection are amazing--warm, witty, profound, laugh-out-loud funny, imaginative, and heartbreaking. The best way to describe her style is that she writes in dream images using dream logic. What I mean is, you know that feeling when you wake up from a vivid dream and you can't recall its chronological narrative format and it doesn't make much logical sense, yet at the same time you can remember vivid images and profound emotions that stem from it? That's exactly what reading a Kelly Link story is like. It's hard to explain precisely what happens in a literal sense, but she's able to make you feel just what she wants you to feel, even when you can't put your finger on why that is. I'm in awe of her ability make her readers feel such depth of emotion through such cryptic and dreamlike imagery.

Take "Lull" for instance, the first story that I read in this collection. It's a weird, complex story about a group of guys playing poker, a phone-sex operator/storyteller, the Devil, a cheerleader, aliens, clones, time travel, and probably a few more things I can't remember. I read it just going along for the ride at first, really having no idea where she was going with it, and then it hit me all at once that what she was really writing about was death and grief and the mourning process. I was overcome with emotion and practically cried throughout the ending.

Another one is "Stone Animals" about a family that moves into a new house that turns out to be "haunted" in a sense. It's a long story, almost a novella, that reads stylistically like a minimalist take on domestic tragicomedy, yet at the same time it's creepy and eerie and almost feels like a regular ghost story, yet there doesn't seem to be any actual ghosts in it. The whole time I felt like I was watching this ordinary suburban family self destruct before my eyes and by the ending it felt like things had gone past the point of no return, yet I can't explain exactly what happened. But it made an impression on me, believe me.

These are just two examples. Other favorites of mine are "The Faery Handbag", "Magic for Beginners" and "The Hortlak" which are all beautifully complex and heartfelt portrayals of the adolescent/young adult experience, love, and the loss of innocence.

If you're at all interested in fantasy, surrealism, experimental fiction, or just plain beautiful writing, please do yourself a favor and check out Kelly Link. Her writing makes the whole world seem like a beautiful place.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing October 13, 2006

By Laci Ratzer

Format:Paperback

I stumbled across this book accidentally, read the "Staff Recommendation" and it really intriqued me. Come to find out, the "Staff Recommendation" was for a different book, but I took it home anyway. And I'm extremely happy I did!

Kelly Link is just an amazing writer. Her stories are strange yet beautiful and they make a nice little home in your head for a long time after you've read them. She makes me hungry for more.

A must have.