The Book of Love by Kelly Link

Late one night, Laura, Daniel, and Mo find themselves beneath the fluorescent lights of a high school classroom, almost a year after disappearing from their hometown, the small seaside community of Lovesend, Massachusetts, having long been presumed dead. Which, in fact, they are.

With them in the room is their previously unremarkable high school music teacher, who seems to know something about their disappearance—and what has brought them back again. Desperate to reclaim their lives, the three agree to the terms of the bargain their music teacher proposes. They will be given a series of magical tasks; while they undertake them, they may return to their families and friends, but they can tell no one where they’ve been. In the end, there will be winners and there will be losers.

But their resurrection has attracted the notice of other supernatural figures, all with their own agendas. As Laura, Daniel, and Mo grapple with the pieces of the lives they left behind, and Laura’s sister, Susannah, attempts to reconcile what she remembers with what she fears, these mysterious others begin to arrive, engulfing their community in danger and chaos, and it becomes imperative that the teens solve the mystery of their deaths to avert a looming disaster.

I wasn't sure whether Kelly Link's magic would work in long (or ultra) long form, but I found this wildly successful while being true to the genre that is unique to Link. Rather than read a Link book linearly or narratively, you have to pay attention to the puzzle of how you feel when characters talk about coins or doors or rabbits or wolves or structural racism and follow that feeling to figure out what's actually happening.

Perhaps as a necessary concession (although a move I found kind of disappointing), Link places three info-dump chapters roughly evenly throughout the book to literally catchup anyone for whom creepy vibes are insufficient explanation. Each of these follow an exposition that takes the narrative in an expansive dimension, opening up the story from the part that proceeded it. I found the first two thirds of the book wildly successful proceeding in this way, and the back third a little too conventional, while still quite good.

Overall, the book reminded me a lot of the best of Dianna Wynne Jones, where you start to believe that anyone could secretly be anyone else, while also being Loki and while you're unlikely to guess right, you're rewarded for being skeptical about fixed identity.

I also found the book thematically successful as well as tonally so. The major themes of the book: the structures that we take for granted even when they don't work for us, and the magically mundanity of love of all forms were deeply seeded throughout the book without being overpowering. A lot of the negative reviews weren't prepared for the balance between epic plot and quiet meditations on the power of relationships and identity and change, but that's what made the book so worth it for me.

Ugh. What an irksome, aggravating, wonderful and beautiful book. I can’t say it was always a joy to read, but it always gave me joy to keep reading, and I know that makes no sense but in many ways neither does the book so nyah.

A lot of my hot buttons in this one: handwavey, superpowerful, how-convenient magic, with completely unexplained rules and equally unexplained inconsistencies. Soul-hurting lookism, where everyone is just so damn attractive. Appalling cruelty. Multiple forms of the amnesia gimmick (the Project Hail Mary and Seven Moons of Maali Almeida type, where protagonists start out not remembering the vitally important and you-might-think-memorable events that led to their predicaments; and also the You Will Forget This Ever Happened mesmerism stuff, both equally cheesy). And, sigh, the one character I related to—the one with the strong moral code and sense of responsibility, who is skeptical and wary of the magical elements, who simply tries to be invisible and do some good—is derided almost nonstop, called boring and more, not just by other character in dialog but even in the author’s own narrative voice.

But.

But, dammit, the author herself is in on it. The characters themselves get irritated at the magic. They vent frustration over the cruelty, and draw frustrated but reasonable parallels to the random cruelties of natural forces. They invent workarounds for their amnesia. Every time you think Link is being sloppy or lazy, she gently winks and lets you in on the joke. But it’s not a farce; not even close. It’s exquisitely smart. Much more importantly, Link understands kindness. She really, really understands it. And cruelty, and love. And she doesn’t overdo any of them nor does she get preachy. Partway through I realized that, magical gimmicks aside, this is purely a book about choices and seeing and caring. It really is a book about loving. And I could go on for hours more, but just go read it.

One night three friends, Laura, Daniel and Mo, suddenly wake up in the music room of their high school with their teacher, Mr. Anabin. They soon discover that they've been missing for almost a year, dead, and have been temporarily returned to life. In order to stay alive, they agree to several magical tasks. While they attempt these tasks they can take their lives back up, and no one will remember that they have been missing. But only two will win this contest and stay alive.

But life has moved on for the people that were left behind, and the three friends struggle to settle back in amidst some pretty big changes, all the while trying to complete their tasks and solve the mystery of their deaths. They aren't the only ones interested in the outcome though - there's something, and someone, far more powerful that is watching and waiting. And the outcome will affect not just these teenagers and their families, but their entire community.

I'm giving this book 3 stars, which for me equates to “I liked it, it was fine.” I think if it hadn't been a staggering 640 pages, I might have rated it higher. At times I felt like the story was dragging, and yet, I'm not entirely sure what could have been cut. I don't usually like magical realism because it starts to feel too nebulous and, at times, pretentious, but that isn't an issue here. The writing is frankly beautiful, and it is very atmospheric. The characters are well written, complex, and highly believable. The main characters are teenagers dealing with some unbelievable events, angsty, messy, sometimes unlikeable, but you find yourself rooting for them because really, who can blame them? At times I felt like this book was too slow, but at the same time, we get to know the characters so well because of how much time we spend with them. They are exceptionally unique and memorable. And this book is truly about the characters and their relationships. (And I just have to say that my favorite character is a tie between Mo's grandmother and Daniel's sister Carousel. I love Carousel. If I ask you what is the first thing you would do if you got magic, and you don't say ‘turn myself into a glittery flying unicorn' then why are you lying?)

I'm not entirely in love with the title. Although love is certainly a theme here, and the driving force behind many of the events, it doesn't really seem to capture what this book is.

In the end, this is an atmospheric, beautifully written, slow burn of a book. A group of teenagers struggling to figure out who they really are, which is a story we can all relate to. It is whimsical, fantastical, and vivid, and I think the only thing that really put me off was the slow pacing in combination with the sheer length. If that's something you look for, then I believe you will love this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for the advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.