Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link
Jun. 6th, 2005 04:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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darkling_talesLJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY dfordoom)
Stranger Things Happen is Kelly Link’s first book. It’s perhaps not strictly horror, but some of the stories are extremely dark. It’s a collection of short stories that are part dreamscape and part fairy tale. But fairy tales with a decidedly contemporary sensibility. I suppose if I had to classify her I’d say she’s a magic realist. Some of the stories could be considered horror, but all are unsettling. They’re unsettling not because they’re bizarre, but because they combine the everyday and the bizarre, just as dreams do. For a first collection by a new writer the quality is amazingly consistent with only a couple of stories that to my mind don’t quite come off. The best of them - Travels With the Snow Queen, Travels With the Snow Queen, Flying Lessons and Vanishing Act - I’d rate as among the best short stories I’ve read in recent years. This is a fantastic book.
dfordoom)Stranger Things Happen is Kelly Link’s first book. It’s perhaps not strictly horror, but some of the stories are extremely dark. It’s a collection of short stories that are part dreamscape and part fairy tale. But fairy tales with a decidedly contemporary sensibility. I suppose if I had to classify her I’d say she’s a magic realist. Some of the stories could be considered horror, but all are unsettling. They’re unsettling not because they’re bizarre, but because they combine the everyday and the bizarre, just as dreams do. For a first collection by a new writer the quality is amazingly consistent with only a couple of stories that to my mind don’t quite come off. The best of them - Travels With the Snow Queen, Travels With the Snow Queen, Flying Lessons and Vanishing Act - I’d rate as among the best short stories I’ve read in recent years. This is a fantastic book.
