Pretty Monsters: Stories (Hardcover)

by Kelly Link (Author)
Key Phrases: star friends, Râmnicu Vâlcea, faery handbag, Lady Fralix, Hans Bliss, James Lorbick (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Readers as yet unfamiliar with Link (Magic for Beginners) will be excited to discover her singular voice in this collection of nine short stories, her first book for young adults. The first entry, The Wrong Grave, immediately demonstrates her rare talents: a deadpan narration that conceals the author's metafictional sleight-of-hand (Miles had always been impulsive. I think you should know that right up front); subjects that range from absurd to mundane, all observed with equidistant irony. Miles, hoping to recover the poems he's buried with his dead girlfriend, digs up what appears to be the wrong corpse (It's a mistake anyone could make, interjects the narrator), who regains life and visits her mother, a lapsed Buddhist (Mrs. Baldwin had taken her Buddhism very seriously, once, before substitute teaching had knocked it out of her'). Other stories have more overtly magical or intertextual themes; in each, Link's peppering of her prose with random associations dislocates readers from the ordinary. With a quirky, fairytale style evocative of Neil Gaiman, the author mingles the grotesque and the ethereal to make magic on the page. Ages 12–up.
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From School Library Journal
Grade 9 Up—In her first collection of stories for young adults, Link upends traditional horror, science fiction, and fantasy motifs, creating original, quirky, and distinctly beautiful literary landscapes. Honed, brilliant language renders blood, werewolves, ghosts, magic, and monsters sublime—at times even funny. Readers will relish uncertainty in these savory, strange stories and never feel quite sure of their footing. They proceed giddily, jumping from one uncanny premise, phrase, or image to the next, eventually stumbling upon a revelation that hits them like the snap of a rubber band. Clever resolutions and tricky plots place teens on delightfully circuitous reading paths. Unexpected endings force them to double back and reconsider each story from the beginning. In this second read, young adults might notice Link's seamless incorporation of their own experiences. Awkward adolescence, uncomfortable first love, frustrating parents, and complicated friendships surface quietly amid wonderfully knotty, twisted plots and incandescent imagery. This compilation of intricate, transfixing selections succeeds in making the weird wonderful and the grotesque absolutely gorgeous.—Shelley Huntington, New York Public Library
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Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Viking Juvenile (October 2, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670010901
• ISBN-13: 978-0670010905
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #355,477 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unparalleled talent, December 11, 2008

By	Henry W. Wagner (Rockaway, NJ USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In a dual review of her previous collections, Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners a couple of years ago, I wrote the following about Kelly Link:

"...for the last decade, [Link] has demonstrated an unparalleled mastery of the short story form in every sense of that word. In retrospect, to say she has mastered the form is perhaps an understatement: not only has she tamed this particular beast, she's taught it a few new tricks. Her talent and dedication shine through in each and every tale.

Link's collections are treasure troves of creative storytelling, each volume a celebration of the power of the imagination, each story a unique, glittering gem worthy of careful and repeated inspection. Combining fantastic concepts with familiar elements of the real world, Link's works reveal there are myriad ways of interpreting and portraying "reality". You'll rarely encounter a writer as warm, adventurous, eclectic and sharp witted as Link. Fearless, there is no place she won't go; empathic, she effortlessly conveys to her audience the nuances of her characters' pain, bewilderment, joy and understanding."

I'm pleased to report that Link's latest collection, Pretty Monsters, bears out these words, providing incontrovertible evidence that she is, as Peter Straub once said, "the most impressive writer of her generation."

Aimed at the so-called young adult audience, Monsters is a happy blend of older, previously collected tales ("Magic for Beginners," "The Faery Handbag," and "The Specialist's Hat") and other, newer stories written for various theme anthologies which are collected here for the first time ("The Wrong Grave" from The Restless Dead, "The Wizards of Perfil" from Firebirds Rising, "Monster" from Noisy Outlaws, "The Surfer" from The Starry Rift, and "The Constable of Abal" from The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales). All though all are entertaining and rewarding on numerous levels, none compare to the title story, "Pretty Monsters," a bit of literary slight of hand which simultaneously manages to evoke the movies Mean Girls and Ginger Snaps while delivering some authentic chills.

As stated in the promotional materials accompanying the uncorrected proof, Link's stories have been Nebula, Locus, British Science Fiction Association, World Fantasy, and Bram Stoker award winners. Her last book, Magic for Beginners, was given Book of the Year Awards from Time Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, and The Village Voice, and was also a Best of BookSense pick for 2005. If you've read her previous collections, or experienced one or more of her stories in their original venues, or in a Year's Best collection, you know why they were so honored. If you have yet to sample any of Link's work, you need to get busy and start enjoying the products of her vivid and expansive imagination. Pretty Monsters would be a great place to start.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Imaginative dark tales for YA and adults!, October 5, 2008

By	z hayes (plano,texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

I have a confession - I'm an adult who loves so-called YA novels, and especially tales of the supernatural and macabre. Kelly Link 's "Pretty Monsters' seems to be borderline between YA and adult fiction. The stories within this collection of dark, fantastical tales are truly unique and what makes them stand out, besides the imaginative plots and unusual characters are the fact that the stories themselves don't usually resolve themselves in a conventional manner.

Among the stories I liked were "Monster", in which a ravenous beast preys on boys at summer camp - and this is an unusual creature indeed, it uses a cell phone. There's the story "The Faerie Handbag"of a girl whose grandma's purse happens to be the living quarters of a fairy village. "The Wrong Grave" is another one that is creepy yet humorous - of a boy named Miles who regrets burying the sole copy of his collection of poems in his deceased girlfriend's casket. These are among the tales that sucked me into a weird,terrifying, and yet humor-tinged world.

The other stories in this collection are "Magic for Beginners" in which a teenager finds himself questioning the 'reality' of the TV show he's addicted to, "The Surfer", "The Wizards of Perfil", "The Constable of Able", "The Specialist's Hat" and "Pretty Monsters".

This is Kelly Link's third collection of stories, after "Magic for Beginners", and "Stranger Things Happen", and the first collection for young adults. The protagonists in these stories are all teens and despite the strange premises of the stories, the characters themselves seem very real and the emotions they experience as they face their 'realities' are very much human. Highly recommended!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Compulsive Reader's Reviews, October 31, 2008

By	The Compulsive Reader (Big Rapids, MI, USA) - See all my reviews

In her new collection of stories, Kelly Link gives readers a wide array of spooky, ironic, and sometimes downright funny short stories that will make them shiver--from Miles's accidental excavation of the wrong girl's grave when he sets about to dig up poems placed in his dead girlfriend's casket, to the terrifying and tech savvy monster who terrorizes a summer camp.

Link's style ranges from quirky to gruesome to downright creepy, and her collection offers a little something for everyone with a unique and highly imaginative quality. Since the content of the book is so varied, some readers might have a little trouble sticking it out through all the stories, but Link's characters are very relatable despite the strange circumstances the find themselves in. However, perhaps the best part about these stories is Link's talent for deceiving twists and surprise endings, which make each and every story all the more enjoyable--and startling.