Harper Perennial Magic for Beginners, Literature, Culture & Art, Paperback, Kelly Link
143 ratings
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Price: £10.99
Brand: Harper Perennial
Description: In this dazzling collection, prize-winning short story writer Kelly Link takes the ordinary and makes it strange - and the strange and makes it ordinary. Engaging, funny, eerie and magical, these nine stories prove Link to be an original and important talent. Harper Perennial Magic for Beginners, Literature, Culture & Art, Paperback, Kelly Link - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: Harper Collins
Product ID: 9780007242009
Delivery cost: Spend £20 and get free shipping
Dimensions: 129x198mm
Keywords: short,crime,mystery,The,cosy
ISBN: 9780007242009
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Author: MrsDanvers
Rating: 5
Review: If you like realism in fiction, 'Magic for Beginners' might not be for you. Move on, nothing to see here. However, if you like a sprinkling of magic with your realism (ok, maybe more than a sprinkling – a teaspoon, a tablespoon, a whole darn shaker's worth of magic) get ready to enter Kelly Link's Carroll-esque world where everyone has a zombie contingency plan, the living can marry the dead and the stone animals on the lawn are not what they seem. With the exception of the odd straightforward, albeit terrifying, fairytale such as the very disturbing 'Catskin', Link's tales usually have one foot in the real world and the other in – well, a world like no other but one with its own internal logic. And she is very funny. Take this comparison of vampires vs zombies: 'Some people thought of vampires as rock stars, but really they were more like Martha Stewart. Vampires were prissy...They had to look good. Zombies weren't like that... You didn't need luxury items like silver bullets or crucifixes or holy water. You just shot zombies in the head...' And the marital problems between a living man and his dead wife (they met at a cocktail party given by a New Yorker-profiled medium and matchmaker) in 'The Great Divorce': 'The children had communicated to their father, via the household planchette and Ouija board, a desire to be taken to Disneyland; because divorce is always hard on the children, and because Disneyland offered, at that time, an extraordinary discount to the dead.' And all this might be going on at the All-Night Convenience or while someone is commuting to work. That's not to say she doesn't tackle emotions; many of her characters seem to be lost or alone in the world or estranged from their loved one(s). If all this sounds entrancing, don't move on, there's plenty to see here. Highly recommended.
Author: T. A. Wright
Rating: 2
Review: I did not like this book. Try to imagine being stuck in a lift with the Mad Hatter. Yes it might be entertaining for a short while but imagine being trapped in there for several hours - with no hope of rescue. If you like stories with clever ideas, this book has hundreds of them. If you want to lose yourself in endless flights of fancy, fun characters, wild adventures and fabulous fairy tale themes, place your order now! But wait... If you value character development, some attempt at creative restraint, prose that doesn't threaten to overwhelm a good tale, and a sense that each individual journey has been satisfactorily completed, then this may not be the purchase for you. I never got the feeling that these highly imaginative tales were ever going anywhere. It was all just too quirky. The book seemed to want to prove how smart it was in every single line. Consequently, the stories were given little room to breathe. If the phrase `style over content' applies to one book, and one book only, Magic For Beginners must surely be a contender. I may have a curse put on me for this review. I only hope you're grateful.
