short stories | Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: Magic For Beginners by Kelly Link

After finally putting down the borrowed copy of Magic for Beginners which I’d been reading on and off for the past week, I can make two definitive statements:

1) Kelly Link is a very gifted writer.

2) I suck at short stories.

I really gave it my all, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to read all eight stories in this collection. I managed to get through six (although for two, my reading might better be described as skimming). If you read my blog post from a few days ago (see it here), you’ll know that I pick up short story collections rarely and reluctantly, but in this case, I’d heard enough high praise for Kelly Link to decide to give it a go.

I absolutely loved the first story in the collection, “The Fairy Handbag”, narrated by a teen girl whose recently deceased, oddball grandmother has appointed her the guardian of a magical handbag. According to Grandmother Zofia, the people in her little village of Baldesziwurlekistan all picked up and moved into the handbag hundreds of years ago in order to escape a terrible invasion, and have lived there happily ever since. “The Fairy Handbag” is weird and wonderful, and I was thoroughly enchanted.

Also very good was “The Stone Animals”, about a family who leaves Manhattan and moves into a country home upstate, only to discover that, slowly but surely, all of their possessions have become haunted. I’m not sure what any of it actually meant, but I love some of the imagery used, especially this brief glimpse of the pregnant wife who can’t stop painting and repainting the rooms in the house:

He found Catherine standing on a ladder in the kitchen, one foot resting on the sink. She was wearing her gas mask, a black cotton sports bra, and a pair of black sweatpants rolled down so he could see she wasn’t wearing any underwear. Her stomach stuck out so far, she had to hold her arms at a funny angle to run the roller up and down the wall in front of her.

The story entitled “Magic for Beginners”, equally weird and oddly touching, is the tale of a fifteen-year-old boy and his friends who are obsessed with a mysterious TV show called The Library. Or is this story about characters on a TV show called The Library who are obsessed with a TV show called The Library? At one point, main character Jeremy wonders “about what kind of television shows the characters in television shows watch.” Kind of made my head spin.

Kelly Link’s writing is lyrical and full of unconventional images and similes. Just two of the many that made me smile:

He feels like a tennis ball in a game where the tennis players love him very, very much, even while they lob and smash and send him back and forth, back and forth.

And…

The disco ball spins and spins. It makes Jeremy feel kind of carsick and also as if he has sparkly, disco leprosy.

Kelly Link has great talent, and I truly enjoyed the stories I read. The fact that I couldn’t get through all of them certainly has more to do with me as a reader rather than with the quality of the book. If you enjoy short stories, and get a kick out of worlds weird and twisted, I’d definitely suggest giving this collection a whirl.

For an educated, literate person, I’m an absolute philistine when it comes to short stories.

I know, I know… according to People Who Matter, the short story is writing as an art form, a purer literary expression than the novel, forcing a writer to use an economy of words in order to convey some larger truth. Or so I’ve heard.

But here’s my larger truth: I just can’t get into them. Even when written by authors I adore, I can’t stomach more than a story or two before my eyes start to glaze over. I find myself rushing through, skipping ahead, and pining for a “real” book — aka, a big, meaty novel that I can really sink my teeth into. It happens every time, no matter how good my intentions.

I’ve had this experience countless times, whether with anthologies featuring stories by multiple authors or a book of short stories by a single author. Some recent cases in point:

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman: I love Neil Gaiman! I read about 95% of the stories in this collection, and there are some that I know I’ll return to over and over again, especially “Snow, Glass, Apples”, “Nicholas Was…”, and “The Wedding Present”. But, finally, I just had to stop — I thought my brain would shrivel up if I read one single story more.

The Baum Plan For Financial Independence and Other Stories by John Kessel: “The Lunar Quartet” stories in this collection were absolutely brilliant. I read a couple of other stories as well, liked them all well enough, and then put the book down.

Fire Watch by Connie Willis: I picked up this collection because I’d like to read the author’s time travel novels and wanted to read the story that came first (“Fire Watch”), and actually read quite a few of the other stories as well. In addition to “Fire Watch”, I especially liked “A Letter From The Clearys” and “And Come From Miles Around”, although “All My Darling Daughters” was so creepy that I can’t quite say I enjoyed it.

After The Apocalypse by Maureen McHugh: A collection that I actually finished! My Goodreads review is here.

Black Juice by Margo Langan: Includes one of the best, most haunting stories I’ve come across recently, “Singing My Sister Down”. The other stories in the collection are good, but just don’t quite measure up to the first story’s power. And yes, I did skip one or two.

Looking at the list I just put together, I must admit that my problem is not really with individual short stories. Clearly, there are many that I like, or even love. But as a whole, I just can’t feel the same enthusiasm for my reading time when I’m sitting down with a book of stories. Maybe I’m too goal-oriented when I read — I’m always looking ahead and planning what to read next, eager to finish more and more of the books on my to-read shelf — and just don’t get the same sense of satisfaction from a story collection. Maybe it’s that I’m looking for more of a long-term commitment; when I develop a relationship with fictional characters, I want it to last hundreds of pages, not 10 or 20. Or maybe I’m just not sophisticated enough to appreciate the beauty of short fiction.

My 22-year-old daughter — to my delight — discovered the joys of Vonnegut a couple of years ago, and has been reading as much of his work as possible ever since. This week, after finishing a 1,000 page novel (A Clash Of Kings, if you must know), she decided to read something a bit shorter and picked up Vonnegut’s Welcome To The Monkey House. She seemed to love it at first, then came to me a day later to ask to borrow a book (#2 of the Jane True series, if you must know this too), saying “You know what, Mom? I think I’m just not a short story person.”

At least I’m in good company.