Magic for Beginners
by Kelly Link
(Small Beer Press, $24.00, 273 pages; hardcover, published in July
2005.)
 When
Small Beer Press released Kelly Link's debut collection, Stranger
Things Happen, in 2001, it heralded the arrival of a major new voice
in both fantasy and short fiction. Link herself is co-owner of Small
Beer Press, which specializes in artfully crafted books of beautifully
strange fiction, yet the usual stigma associated with self-publishing
need not apply here. Her fiction is widely anthologized, and her second
Small Beer Press collection, Magic for Beginners, has already
been picked up by Harcourt Brace for a later paperback release.
Magic for Beginners includes a few originals in addition to
collecting stories that have appeared in prestigious venues such as
Conjunctions and McSweeney's.
These stories shimmer like impressionist paintings. Link never dwells
on superfluous details but lets readers' imaginations fill out the settings
and scenarios she suggests rather than describes. She creates worlds
slightly askew from our own, in which childhood dreams are truer than
the reality constructed by adults, in which tall tales intrude upon
everyday life, in which bizarre creatures lurk, in which a peculiar
wit permeates the weirdest horrors.
Link's protagonists are usually young women, teenage girls, or little
girls. There's fragile tenderness in her work, but no cheap sentimentality.
Link's gaze is never squeamish nor prudish. The violence hurts. The
sex is candid.
The stories begin with outlandish and playful premises -- a handbag
that's also a gateway to faery realms; a convenience store where zombies
hang out; a lawn haunted by rabbits -- and then become stranger still,
never succumbing to cliché and predictability.
In this second collection Link's voice is bolder and more confident.
She's always playful both in her use of language and in her storytelling.
Even when her stories are gruesome and disturbing, they exude joy. Reading
Kelly Link is a joyful experience. 
Originally published in
The Montreal Gazette, Saturday, 19 November 2005.
Claude Lalumière's Fantastic Fiction
is a series of
capsule reviews first published in the Saturday Books
section of The Montreal Gazette.
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