Magic for Beginners

by Kelly Link

Other authorsShelley Jackson (Illustrator)
Hardcover, 2005

Status

Available

Call number

813.6

Collection

Publication

Small Beer Press (2005), Edition: First Edition, Hardcover, 272 pages

Description

Fantasy. Fiction. Science Fiction. Short Stories. HTML:Perfect for readers of George Saunders, Karen Russell, Neil Gaiman, and Aimee Bender, Magic for Beginners is an exquisite, dreamlike dispatch from a virtuoso storyteller who can do seemingly anything. Kelly Link reconstructs modern life through an intoxicating prism, conjuring up unforgettable worlds with humor and humanity. These stories are at once ingenious and deeply moving. They leave the reader astonished and exhilarated. Includes an exclusive conversation between Kelly Link and Joe Hill Read by Mark Bramhall, Cassandra Campbell, Danny Campbell, Robbie Daymond, Kirby Heyborne, Rebecca Lowman, Arthur Morey, Lorna Raver and Meera Simhan Praise for Magic for Beginners   “A sorceress to be reckoned with.”—The New York Times Book Review   “[Kelly] Link’s stories . . . play in a place few writers go, a netherworld between literature and fantasy, Alice Munro and J. K. Rowling, and Link finds truths there that most authors wouldn’t dare touch.”—Lev Grossman, Time   “She is unique and should be declared a national treasure.”—Neil Gaiman   “Funny, scary, surprising and powerfully moving within the span of a single story or even a single sentence.”—Karen Russell, The Miami Herald   “This is what certain readers live for: fiction that makes the world instead of merely mimicking it.”—Audrey Niffenegger   “[These] exquisite stories mix the aggravations and epiphanies of everyday life with the stuff that legends, dreams and nightmares are made of.”—Laura Miller, Salon, Best Books of the Decade   “A major talent . . . Like George Saunders, [Link] can’t dismiss the hidden things that tap on our windows at night.”—The Boston Globe   “The most darkly playful voice in American fiction.”—Michael Chabon   “I think she is the most impressive writer of her generation.”—Peter Straub   “Link’s world is one to savor. [Grade:] A”—Entertainment Weekly   “Intricate, wildly imaginative and totally wonderful . . . will fill you with awe and joy.”—NPR.… (more)

Media reviews

Her best stories (and there are at least three small masterpieces here) are breathtaking tightrope acts—at once faintly familiar and pungently defamiliarized, thick with incongruous detail yet clouded in a redolent ambiguity. They are not merely dreamlike—subject to an intricate internal logic,
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they have a pulsing, worrying intensity, a larger meaning that lies just on the outer limits of apprehension, like dreams transcribed on the verge of consciousness.
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User reviews

LibraryThing member isabelx
The woman stood and flicked through magazines, and at some point she realized that the man standing there with his eyes closed was wearing pajamas. She stopped reading through People magazine and started reading Batu's pajamas instead. Then she gasped, and poked Batu with a skinny finger.
"Where did
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you get those?" she said. "How on earth did you get those?"
Batu opened his eyes. "Excuse me," he said. "May I help you find something?"
"You're wearing my diary," the woman said. Her voice went up and up in a wail. "That's my handwriting! That's the diary I kept when I was fourteen! But it had a lock on it, and I hid it underneath my mattress, and I never let anyone read it. Nobody ever read it!"

What is your Zombie Contingency Plan? According to Soap in the story of that name, everyone should have one . . . just in case.

The book starts with a tale about a village hidden inside a dog-skin handbag, and it is followed by some equally inventive and varied stories. "Hortlak", doesn’t seem to be fantasy at first, until you realise that the convenience store worker who refers to some of his customers as zombies isn’t just being insulting. Other stories that I loved were "The Stone Rabbits" about an unusual haunted house, and the title story, in which a group of teenage friends are brought together my their love of a mysterious and irregularly scheduled cult TV series. I didn’t like the non-story "The Cannon", and the book ended with one of the weaker stories, the backwards time-travel story "The Lull", but I loved the other seven stories.

I'd never heard of Kelly Link until someone on the fantasywithbite Live Journal community recommended her, but I put this book on my wish list and came across it in the 'bad' bookshop in Birmingham (the source of many temptations at ÂŁ1 per book). I'm a short story fan anyway, and this is one of the better collections of fantasy stories out there, so I will definitely be on the lookout for her other books.
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LibraryThing member wyvernfriend
They're interesting short stories and I don't regret reading them but they were just not me. They fall more into the magic realism end of the fantasy spectrum than the urban fantasy that I enjoy reading, and skate the border of horror as well.
LibraryThing member bililoquy
Link's best work to date, collected. Any lover of fiction owes it to herself to read this collection cover to cover in a night. The Hortlak, Catskin, Stone Animals (anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2005), Lull, The Faery Handbag, the title story...well, I just listed half of the
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table of contents. All are bullseyes. Zombies, cheerleaders, superheroes, witches, and backwards-travelling devils populate and color an acute psychological landscape: these are never stories about zombies etc, but rather, identity, death, love, loss, youth, age, ennui.

Link is writer's writer--she gathers plaudits from such disparate reviewers as China Mieville, Alice Sebold, and Jonathan Lethem. Her prose recalls J.K. Rowling or Neil Gaiman in its whimsical, sympathetic easiness, and Mieville in its poetry. Her daring willingness and easy capacity to depict a world which simply does not cohere is an inspiration.
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LibraryThing member Shimmin
I couldn't really get into this. It seems essentially like literary fantasy vignettes. The two stories I read were knowingly weird, and very successful at it - my problem was that they didn't seem to have anything else in mind. On reflection, they remind me strongly of RPG game fiction, evoking a
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distinctive setting well but not particularly going anywhere. I enjoyed the first half of the first story, until I realised none of the weirdness would ever be resolved. The weirdness alone was not enough to engage me.
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LibraryThing member abirdman
Kelly Link is a young lion in the McSweeny's crowd, and what a great writer she is. All but one or two of these stories are deft and magical and damn good. A young writer with, I hope, a brilliant future. A little dark, a little perverse, and a little magical mystery with just the right amount of
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insouciance. A wholly satisfying book.
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LibraryThing member tikitu-reviews
Link is more daring with this collection than with Stranger Things Happen, and it doesn't always do it for me. One of her strengths in the first collection is her willingness to leave the 'story' underspecified, which gives subtly-horror pieces like "Water off a Black Dog's Back" much more
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skin-creepy edge. In Magic, this approach sometimes gets taken far enough that I'm no longer sure there is a 'story' underneath. Another of her strengths is the slightly off-the-wall scattershot creativity (given free rein to glorious effect in the glimpses of "The Library" in the title story) but precisely this quality makes it difficult to decipher a piece like "The Hortlak", since any detail may be significant or might just be extravagant colour. I'm happiest when I don't quite understand what the author is saying, but when I'm still comfortable that they're saying something -- and some of these stories tip me off that narrow ledge, sadly.

Still, this isn't always the case, and even where it is I'm hopeful that closer re-reading will pull things together a little. And really, I'm willing to put up with some authorial misbehaviour in exchange for beauties like "Some Zombie Contingency Plans", "Catskin", and (my personal favourite) "The Great Divorce".
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LibraryThing member raphaelmatto
Took me totally off-guard. Who is Kelly Link? The last two stories are wonderful. Skip the story about the witch & her cats. Didn't care for many of the endings in this book though...
LibraryThing member rosencrantz79
Kelly Link gets the award for Most Off-the-Wall, Genre Crossing Fiction Ever. After reading "Stone Animals," her short story which appeared in BASS 2005 (about a family whose new house becomes increasingly more haunted, day by day), I needed more, so I bought Magic For Beginners. One must come to
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Link's writing fully expecting that ANYTHING can happen. In these stories, dead people interact with the living, an entire village lives inside an old woman's handbag, and characters time travel through telling stories. All of this, and there are two--count 'em: Two!--zombie stories, to boot!
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LibraryThing member RaceBannon42
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
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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
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LibraryThing member MikeFarquhar
Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link, is a collection of short stories that are difficult to pin down into a definite genre, and are all the sweeter for it. I've not come across Link before, but I'll be looking out for her from now on. Link's characters live in worlds where reality blends with
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something that is fantastical ... where ghost bunnies haunt houses, where everyone (not just Mark Hall) has a plan for dealing with zombies, and American teenagers are hooked on a bizarre television programme set in a 'world-tree library' where characters are never played by the same actor twice in succession, and where they themselves form part of the story. The stories are strange and beautiful, and almost without exception, are perfectly formed little morsels that work their way into your brain and expand there. (There are a couple of lesser stories, but even they have their merits). A collection to experience.
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LibraryThing member pratchettfan
Magic for Beginners is a dazzling short story collection by Kelly Link that deftly intermingles reality, fantasy, mystery and magic. Some stories are deeply mysterious, others highly complex and others tell stories within stories within stories... Underneath it all is such an easy and fluent
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storytelling that it sets your imagination on fire. A must read!
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LibraryThing member cabrown
Hands down, the best book I've read all year. Beautifully written stories that are just eerie enough to set your teeth on edge.
LibraryThing member wordebeast
Gorgeous gorgeous collection. "The Faery Handbag" is a must read. It converted me into a short story reader.
LibraryThing member extrajoker
The cover art for this short story collection is what first caught my eye: I recognized it as a reworking of Lady with an Ermine. I really enjoy Link's smooth and conversational writing: she hooks me from the beginning, interests me in the odd paranormality of her world, makes me care about her
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characters. I only wish her stories were more story-like: instead, some of them fizzle, or just seem to maintain a steady level of (in)action, without climax and denouement. Still, with moods that volley between Gaimanic and Lovecraftian, the book is an enjoyable read.
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LibraryThing member reika33
While highly inventive, I found reading this was....uncomfortable. All of the stories end on an unresolved note. While I don't usually mind this technique, used on an unremitting basis, it becomes tedious and downright uncomfortable. The stories *are* odd and quirky, fun at times, disturbing at
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others. Overall, I felt strangely unsatisfied when I finished.
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LibraryThing member bzedan
So, I'm a little super fond of Kelly Link's work. It's wild and fey in an old way, where the bright and sparkling creatures of the imagination bite and draw blood.The title story is like dreaming lucidly—but I really loved Catskin for it's Grimm-ness (OMiG pun), so I'm gonna have to say that's
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the favourite.
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LibraryThing member donp
Her writing scares me. It makes me want to burn all of my writing materials in an oil drum and walk away.
LibraryThing member GingerbreadMan
Not quite like anything I've ever read. There's a definite dream-like, nightmarish quality here, but Link also plays with the deceptive straightforwardness of fairytales, as well as mixing a streak of tongue-in-cheek genre humour in there. It's quite disturbing and eerie and leave tons of open ends
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and strange questions hanging. Me like.
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LibraryThing member cygnoir
Several friends recommended this collection to me, and I feel foolish that it has taken me this long to read it. I am enamoured with the way that Link tinkers with reality in her stories. Sometimes when she tinkers a *lot* I feel lost and have to push myself to plug into the meta-story. Regardless,
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most of the stories were entertaining, and all of them were fascinating. Anything I write here feels so small and ordinary compared to what she does. Go. Read. Get confused. Push through.
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LibraryThing member asciiphil
The stories are surreal but compelling. Not all of them are winners, but the title story is worth the price of the book alone.
LibraryThing member solicitouslibrarian
Without recalling too much of the book, many of these stories blurred together for me. Perhaps I was disappointed with them because I was so looking forward to reading it? I found it unworthy of the hype.
LibraryThing member klarsenmd
This is a unique collection of odd short stories. Some were fantastic and others were hard for me to get interested in. The voice is unique and the plots unusual, but something just kept me from being swept away.
LibraryThing member timtom
The best fantasy short stories I've read in a long, long time! Kelly's little marvels are both funny and haunting, lightweight and dark, inspiring and highly enjoyable. And they have it all: aliens! zombies! giant spiders! teenage girls! A drugstore chain explores a brand new customer base in
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targeting the dead, counselors try to salvage marriages between living and dead through Ouija boards, teenagers find themselves a part of their favorite TV show, a man weds his cannon, a village hides in a handbag, a witch gives birth to her home... each story is a strange and clever universe, bridging the fantastic and the familiar, and sometimes even hides references to other stories: delightful!
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LibraryThing member PhoebeReading
I usually enjoy being unsettled by writers; when reading a skin-crawlingly creepy Stephen King novel, or spooky and sexual and gross alien sex story by Octavia Butler, I enjoy the little shivers that run up-and-down my arms. Unfortunately, though I was frequently unsettled by the stories in Kelly
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Link's Magic for Beginners, it wasn't always a good kind of unsettled.Link's tales ranged from nearly straight-forward fiction (the title story) to extremely surreal and dreamlike vignettes ("The Hortlak") and occupied nearly every space in the continuum between these extremes. I was least comfortable with the stories that fell somewhere in the middle--like "Lull", the tale of a poker game that abruptly becomes something about time travel and the devil halfway through, or "Stone Animals", a Year's Best winner which shoehorns supernatural elements (I think?) into a domestic story. That one reminded me quite a bit of House of Leaves, which essentially told the same story (family moves into a new house where something strange is happening) in a way that was simultaneously more affecting and--and I never thought I'd say this about House of Leaves--more straight-forward.My problem with these stories is that Link seems to find it unnecessary to establish any sort of rules for their fantastic elements. They have a slippery quality that I found vertigo-inducing rather than thrilling. In stories like "Catskin" or "The Hortlak" the surreal elements work because they're clearly part of the rules of both the universe-at-hand and the story. But, when she casually mentions that the characters in "Magic for Beginners" are fictional television characters, despite the fact that they otherwise seems completely grounded in our reality, I couldn't help but wonder: Why? To what end? How is the story enhanced by this? Unfortunately, those were questions that remained unaddressed.Similarly unsettling was Link's tendency not just to leave stories open-ended, but to end them at the absolutely worse time, often introducing new elements into the story in the same breath. There's no anticipating the endings here, and by the last story I read, I came to dread the last few pages, despite the fact I'd enjoyed the process of reading.These are issues of control, I think, and it's a shame--Link is clearly a strong writer. Her characters are vivid and her universes believable, but her stories would be a more satisfying read if she could stay true to either.
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LibraryThing member rivkat
Absurdist fantasy fiction with a lot of references to classic and other stories. Again, I’m left cold. I like worldbuilding and logical consequences, which means of course that the real world disappoints me a lot, but also that these stories aren’t really for me. Available as a free download.

Awards

Locus Award (Finalist — Collection — 2006)
World Fantasy Award (Nominee — Collection — 2006)
Bram Stoker Award (Nominee — Collection — 2005)

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2005 (Collection)
2005-01-01
2003 (The Canon)
2003 (Catskin)
2004 (The Faery Handbag)
2005 (The Great Divorce)
2003 (The Hortlak)
2002 (Lull)
2005 (Magic For Beginners)
2005 (Some Zombie Contingency Plans)
2004 (Stone Animals)

Physical description

272 p.; 8.7 inches

ISBN

1931520151 / 9781931520157
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