Magic for Beginners (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Shelley Jackson (Illustrator)
Key Phrases: zombie contingency plans, faery handbag, people under the hill, The Witch's Revenge, The Library, King Spanky (more...)

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)
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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

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Small Beer Press; First Edition edition (July 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931520151
• ISBN-13: 978-1931520157
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #296,108 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

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

By	Kelly C. Shaw (Milwaukee, WI USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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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.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gems, September 14, 2005

By	Nicole Lowery (WI) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

How to describe a Kelly Link story? Charming, odd, sharp, uncomfortable, witty, wistful, strange? Pick a few adjectives and mix well. She makes the strange everyday and the everyday strange. She writes better than most genre (and "literary") writers but never condescends to the genre readers that have embraced her.

Link is one of my few must-reads, although I hate to read her stories because then I've read them and can't look forward to reading them for the first time ever again. Which is sad.

For instance, I'll never again be able to read the title story for the first time and think how great it would be to have a sort of guerilla television show like "The Library" which airs at unpredictable times on odd channels and features different actors in the same parts.

But hey, lucky you if you haven't read this collection -- buy it now! Once you read her stories you'll be glad you did. And then really sorry. (Don't worry, you'll still enjoy them the second, third, fortieth time.)

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Get ready for a trip you wont soon forget, August 7, 2006

By	S. Spaulding "http://racebannon42.blogspot.com/" (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Short Fiction is something I've not read much of. For most of my life the majority of what I read was Epic fantasy, big heavy multi-volume works. As a result, I've missed out on a whole lot of great writing. While good epic fantasy is still my favorite, I've been trying to expand my horizons, and I thought a great place to start would be with Kelly Link.

Magic for Beginners, is a collection of 9 stories. Having never read Link I went in not knowing what to expect. The first story, The Faery Handbag, was a winner for me. Odd and quirky are the first two words that spring to mind when I try and describe this story, and come to find out the rest of the stories make this one seem pretty normal. In this story a young woman searches for her grandmother's magical handbag, that contains a realm in which time runs at a fraction of the speed of our world.

The Hortlak, details the goings on of a 24 hour convenience store. Its sort of reminded me of Clerks meets Shawn of the Dead.

The Cannon, was the shortest story and I didn't care for it. Link has a very stream of consciousness style of writing. Sometimes its brilliant, other times, its just too disjointed and out there for my taste.

Stone Animals, had a very horror feel to me. While not a scary story really, I felt very disturbed at times while reading this.

Catskin, was like a Grim Brothers' fairy tail on acid. While reading many of the stories, I found myself baffled as to how someone thinks of stuff like this.

Some Zombie Contingency Plans, was my favorite story, not only does it have an awesome title, but it was the most realistic of the stories. I felt more connection to Soap than to anyone else in these stories.

The Great Divorce, is a story about a man and his dead wife. She was dead when they were married. People occasionally marry ghosts. This of course can be problematic.

Magic for Beginners, seems to be a favorite to take the Hugo for Novella this year. I can see why. This was a great story. How Link manages to craft a world within a world in such a short amount of space is amazing. The story centers around a group of teens and their love of the cult show The Library. The ideas she presents here are mesmerizing. I marvel at how her mind works.

Lull, was a bit anticlimactic after the wonderful title story. This story was again rather meta. Stories within stories.

As a whole I like the collection. Odd, weird, strange, and beautiful. I fully intend to read more by Link , and read more short fiction.

8 out of 10