"No other author, for me, has so powerfully fused together the fantastical with the human in narrative."
I came to Kelly Link’s short stories through an earlier collection, Magic for Beginners. I felt the world shift around me as I read. No other author, for me, has so powerfully fused together the fantastical with the human in narrative.
I prefer the word reveal to the word twist, because that’s what it should do – reveal the true nature of the story you’re reading. There is always a moment at the end of each Kelly Link story when the world transforms and the truth of things is revealed in all its odd terror and beauty.
Get in Trouble, her Pulitzer shortlisted collection, changed the way I write, and maybe even how I see the world, a little. Whether it’s a superhero whose only power is to hover a few feet off the ground, or a family trapped into a fairy bargain in rural Kentucky, Kelly Link makes the fantastical seem real, and vice versa. ‘The Ghost Boyfriend,’ about a new kind of doll for teenage girls, ‘I Can See Right through You,’ about an aging movie star visiting his ex-girlfriend on the set of her ghost hunting reality TV show, and ‘Two Houses,’ a tale about a haunted spaceship are particular favourites of mine. The final story about pocket worlds is almost a metaphor for the book – you slip in and out of her universes with ease, dazzled by each one.
Primary Genre | Shorter Reads |
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