Product Description

Magic for Beginners is the highly anticipated second collection of stories from Kelly Link, author of the cult favorite Stranger Things Happen. Here she unfurls an engaging, funny and magical selection of stories with riffs on marriage, cannons, convenience stores, superheros, zombies, and apocalyptic poker parties. Many stories have never before been published; others have previously been published in McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, Conjunctions, and The Dark, but are collected here for the first time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #389340 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781931520157
• Condition: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:
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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.

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

From Bookmarks Magazine
The stories-within-stories feel of Magic for Beginners, not to mention its absurdist magical realism, left some critics feeling alienated. Nor could many place Link (Stranger Things Happen) in a precise literary niche. Yet all agree that Link’s imagination is a plausible, even powerful, force. Even when critics admitted that allusions and postmodern ploys went swiftly over their heads, no one forgot a single story. And, if the weird, creepy, and unbelievable predominate, Link pens characters and scenes so sweetly ("Anne Tyler-ward," notes the Village Voice) that readers won’t mind the aliens, ghost-dogs, and zombies. Link’s collection may defy simple interpretation, but it also challenges readers to decipher for themselves what is real . . . and what is not.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

The year's best fiction
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.

Get ready for a trip you wont soon forget
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

A Truly Magical Book
Books like Magic for Beginners, $24.00 Amazon.com, should be easy to praise. However this second collection of supernatural stories, from author Kelly Link, - while fun to read - makes for a difficult review. She's not a conventional writer and these aren't conventional stories. Ever read a story about a haunted family, and not a haunted house? I'm going to take a stab at summarizing, but frankly, I'm not sure if even I can serve this odd book any justice. It's one of those titles that you must read for yourself. It's been sheer folly trying to review it, but I think I've faithfully captured the basic texture of the book in my efforts here.

Each story hides an element of human chaos; a Russian grandmother with an enchanted handbag dies, a peculiar employee of an all-night convenience store runs away, a haunted family throws one last dinner party, a party crasher obsessed with zombies outsmarts a teenage girl, a witch gives her three children motherly deathbed advice, a man negotiates a divorce with his ghostly wife, the teenage son of a horror writer strives to save a fictional character (in a pirate TV broadcast) from certain death, and an apocalyptic weekend poker party is interrupted by alien visitors.

Grades of A plus (on the Steve-ometer) are given to four specific stories - Stone Animals, The Faery Handbag, The Great Divorce, and The Hortlak. These are the ones I consider as being groundbreaking, the best, the most sincere. Link obviously gave each of these four yarns a little extra-special effort. Each of these stories has a magical dreamlike quality. Stone Animals, originally published in Conjunctions, and soon to appear in the next edition of The Best American Short Stories series, establishes Link as a writer to watch. The other five stories are merely Grade B in my opinion, but with a little more spit and polish, they too might spark your fancy.

In The Faery Handbag, teenager Genevieve faces an unusual predicament. She can't find recently deceased Grandmother Zofia's enchanted handbag. And she must recover it, if she ever hopes to rescue her missing boyfriend, Jake! Each week her search takes her to Boston's Garment District, but frankly, she's not having much luck when we join in. I won't spoil the ending, but the story resembles a lost Aesop's fable. The casual manner in which the author winks at you - as she spins the tale - is really quite appealing. Link had me hooked from the first sly sentence, which reads: I used to go to thrift stores with my friends. Scrabble also figures prominently in this particular story, so that also helps.

Next story? The Hortlak. This one's a real corker. It revolves around Eric, who works the night shift, and Batu, who works the day shift, at the All-Night Convenience store on Ausible Chasm Road near the Canadian border. The two clerks live in the store - they take turns sleeping in the storage closet. Eric has a crush on a girl named Charley that wanders in and out of the store from time to time, but he's slow to act upon it. If it weren't for Batu teaching Charley helpful Turkish phrases whenever she comes in for a Mountain Dew, Eric might have already approached her, but its hard to concentrate on your love life when the undead keep distracting you - when zombies keep trying to engage you, after midnight, in mysterious cashless transactions. Great hook ending here! But what, pray tell, is a Hortlak? In my mind, that's the real million dollar question.

Now that you have a feel for the outlandish nature of Link's work, I encourage you to read Stone Animals, which is a real accomplishment! I dare you to tell me what's going on at the end of this ghost story? If it makes any sense. This flawless piece is ostensibly about faithfulness - the sanctity of marriage - but judging from the manner in which this post-9/11 story is woven, it carries multiple meanings, and works on many submerged levels. Henry and Catherine (husband & wife) have recently navigated a minefield of marital discord, but with two children in tow, and a new baby on the way, they've apparently found a measure of tranquility by relocating to a home somewhere just North of New York City. Or have they? Exactly what happens at the end of this story? Has Henry become unhinged? Has someone else murdered his family? Have Henry and his family actually been dead all along? I'm really not quite sure. Please get back to me, with your own interpretation.

Even though I enjoyed the story Magic for Beginners, from which the book derives its title, I choose not to recommend it highly. It's a clever construct that evokes the exact sort of feelings that Stephen King's children most likely have for their nearly departed dad - I'd guess - but I thought it contained a lot of filler. Though I felt sympathy for the earnest group of teens the story revolved around, I must confess I was hoping for a better denouement. Link left me dangling on the line, at the end, therefore I felt shortchanged. Link might consider placing these particular characters into a full-blown novel, with a better end result.

Really though, the story I'm most enamored of was The Great Divorce, since it delivers the strongest kick. Who on earth (besides Kelly Link?) could come up with a story about a living man and a ghostly woman spawning a trio of phantom children, the mere concept that a mismatched pair like this would then brooch the ugly topic of divorce? Better yet, what was the authoress smoking when she came up with this? This tale has some fantastic imagery, such as a trembling haunted pink bougainvillea, and departed spirits waiting in long orderly lines at Disneyland, their heels resting upon the shoulders of the living amusement park patrons. The final few paragraphs just took my breath away. The last two sentences are priceless! Turn of the screw, indeed!

Since I appreciate Link, I'd recommend she find a better Editor. I've found singular words that should have been plural, close quotes that were omitted, sentences that were missing words, and intact typos within the pages of this book. (see page 219, fourth line, for example) This clutch of errors proved a major distraction while scanning Magic for Beginners, (which must have been written in extreme haste) but don't let the little things that annoyed me dissuade you from pursuing this otherwise charming collection. I sincerely look forward to reading Kelly's third compilation; she's tapped into some vein that's truly otherworldly.