Stranger things happen

I usually am pretty opposed to short stories. They tail off just as things get interesting. But Kelly Link is different. Kelly Link doesn't really write stories – short or otherwise – her work is something completely different. She operates outside of the usual logic of narrative. Although, to be fair, perhaps my favorite of her works is the most conventional: The Specialists Hat, which I've read in other collections, is just so undeniably spooky. The atmosphere of dread is palpable, and Link sets it up perfectly, you read it thinking that everything might just turn out fine (even though I've read it before) and she gets you just at the last moment.

Her other works in this collection are more atmospheric riddles than stories, per se, but she does them well, with rich atmospheres and a sense of a consistent mythology just beyond the reader's grasp. There's just something really nice about reading someone who's doing something no one else is.

It's a book full of quirky, magical realism short stories. Link is working with a similar palette as Neil Gaiman or Angela Carter, with shades of fairy tales, mythology, and the supernatural.

Link has a lot of cleverness and imagination but her stories never grabbed me on an emotional or intellectual level. Quirky and whimsical are not enough to make great or even good stories. Take “Shoe and Marriage” for instance. This is a short story made of four short stories, each on the subject of shoes and marriage. The part about the honeymoon couple watching the increasingly weirder beauty contestants made me laugh a bit but where was she going with this? There needs to be some point, either saying something about the characters and marriage or humanity in general or a plot of some kind. It's just some weird stuff thrown together.

Other reviewers mentioned the lack of endings to most of these. I don't mind an open ending, one that leaves things open to interpretation. However with these stories, I could see the “twist” a mile away and yet she would never get down to it. For example, the best story in the collection for me was “Survivor's Ball or The Donner Party.” You can guess from the title what might be about to happen but Link never goes in for the kill. (So to speak.) Maybe I just don't appreciate subtlety when I see it, but the stories just never get that interesting.

There is also a lack of variety in the collection. Everything is written with the same kind of voice, regardless of what the story is about or who is telling it. It doesn't show much versatility.