Customer Reviews

Stranger Things Happen: Stories

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Kelly Link is a marvel. I can't remember the last time I was so excited about a new writer, and these wonderful stories about travel, feet and footwear, and the intricacies of relationship are some of the finest pieces of short fiction of the last decade. 'The Specialist's Hat,' 'Travels with the Snow Queen,' and the indescribable 'The Girl Detective' combine horror and humor with fragments of mythology and popular culture, all shot through with a deceptively simple and utterly engaging narrative voice.

These stories are unquestionably fantasies, but Link is one of those rare writers who understand fantasy's potential to give shape to such basic human realities as longing, isolation, and the need for love. Some of these pieces are experimental in form and content, but even these stories reveal a directness and emotional honesty that is all too rare, not only in genre fiction, but also in the increasingly mannered and self-referential fictions of postmodernism.

They are also endearingly odd. These stories concern a woman who only seduces cellists, a farmer with a collection of artificial noses, and tap-dancing bank robbers. Strangeness is simply a pervasive feature of the landscape, a reminder that the peculiar is an inescapable fact of daily life.

These are, quite simply, some of the best short stories that it has ever been my pleasure to read. Buy this book. Buy two, and give the other to someone you really like. Trust me on this one: you won't be disappointed.

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.

Kelly Link makes everything magical. Her words have lived inside my head since the day I opened this book. I don't care if you're a half-dead tweaker or a Head of State in a facist regime or a normal person who's just looking for something that'll make a plane ride less cramped and smelly...this is your book. It's for you. Waiting right here. The stories are spectacular in their breadth and their whimsy and their wonder. And then you can come back and re-read them, and they've changed a little, because you've changed a little...and the reading process becomes so pleasant and sublime that the other books on your shelves are going to get jealous.

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.

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.

"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.

Though I typically struggle with short story collections (Adam Haslett's "You Are Not A Stranger Here" excluded), this grouping is a phenomenal and delightfully surprising read.

The stories in Kelly Link's collection really touch on the elements of human life (more specifically--human suffering) and a quirky twist is added to each to take the ideas to a new level. While the ideas are a tad extreme/odd (i.e. man has voluntary amputation to identify with the idea of loss) there is nothing here that should scare off more mainstream readers. Fans of Jonathan Lethem will like this collection.

Most notable stories include: Louise's Ghost,Most of My Friends are Two-Thirds Water, and Water Off a Black Dog's Back. Keep an eye on this author for a full length novel. Should Link be able to expand her story-telling to novels, you'll be looking at some seriously popular books.

Grab Stanger Things Happen. Definitely worth the cover price.

Kelly Link writes sort of like Neil Gaiman and sort of like Karen Joy Fowler and very much like no one but herself. The stories are spooky and sad and strange and funny and fine, and the book itself is gorgeously produced. My favorites are probably "The Specialist's Hat", "The Girl Detective", and "Flying Lessons": love and joy and going down into the Underworld, up into the shadows, out into Faerie, in search of the lost. But there isn't a bad story in the lot; the worst I can say about any of them is that the early "Water Off a Black Dog's Back" doesn't quite achieve either the tenderness or the chill it needs to work, and falls flat. (I'm rather sorry I read this when it came out, in retrospect, because it put me off trying the rest of her stories for a while.) But the rest of them are indescribably strange and incredibly good.

Several of the stories are available online. Check 'em out.

Threads of humor and self-awareness run through these clever tales. I'm not usually a fan of horror fiction but I found these stories engaging and challenging. There are echoes of fable and myth throughout.

The Specialist's Hat is atmospheric and spooky. Flying Lessons and Travels with the Snow Queen are clever and have a sweetness that offsets their darkness. Louise's Ghost skillfully carries off the difficult feat of having two distinct characters named Louise. The final story, The Girl Detective, is a smoky blend of several of these attributes and I can relate to her appreciation for the genre.

As with any collection, I liked some stories more than others but overall it was a very enjoyable read.

This is the best short story collection to be published in years....

Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link is that rare book that is perfect and sad and happy and crazy and real and funny and serious and everything you would hope a book of short stories. All are perfect. The Girl Detective is better than you think it is ( and you think it's great), while stories like The Specialist's Hat become part of your psyche.

Kelly Link is one to watch, one to read, and one to pass on to friends you want to keep forever.