magic
for beginners
kelly
link
Illustrated
by Shelley Jackson.
HC: July 1, 2005 · 1931520151 ·
$24 | Paypal
| Mail
order · local
bookshop · Powells
PB: Sept. 5, 2006 · 0156031876 ·
$14 | local
bookshop · Powells
Limited
edition
·
· · Out now in paperback ·
· ·
"Eerie and engrossing."
-- Washington
Post Book World
"For Kelly Link, life is
suddenly magic."
-- Detroit
Free Press (Hillil Italie, AP)
"Magic
for Beginners (Harvest, $14), is worth
picking up. Doing so will put you in the
hands of a true conjurer."
-- Vikas Turakhia, Cleveland
Plain Dealer
Best
of the Year:
- "Link's
stories ... play in a place few writers
go, a netherworld between literature and
fantasy, Alice Munro and J.K. Rowling,
and Link finds truths there that most
authors wouldn't dare touch."
-- Time
Magazine
- "Link's
writing shimmers with imagination."
-- Salon
- "A
mind-bending blast, as funny, disturbing
and poignant as anything I've read this
year."
-- Capitol
Times
-
"The storyteller's mantra -- "It
gets better" -- come to life and
multiplied."
-- Village
Voice
- "Link's
powerful prose places this collection
into a class of its own."
-- Boldtype
(2005 Notable Books)
-
San Francisco Chronicle.
Story
Prize recommended reading list.
Nebula
Awards: "The
Faery Handbag" and "Magic
for Beginners".
Locus Awards: "Magic
for Beginners" and Magic For
Beginners.
Bram Stoker Award Finalist.
Table
of Contents: The
Faery Handbag : The Hortlak : The Cannon
: Stone Animals : Catskin : Some Zombie
Contingency Plans : The Great Divorce :
Magic for Beginners : Lull.
Link's
engaging and funny second collection --
call it kitchen-sink magical realism --
riffs on haunted convenience stores, husbands
and wives, rabbits, zombies, weekly apocalyptic
poker parties, witches, superheroes, marriage,
and cannons -- and includes several new
stories. Link is an original voice: no one
else writes quite like this.
Each
story is illustrated by cover artist Shelley
Jackson. The cover is modeled on Leonardo
Da Vinci's "Lady with an Ermine."
Stories
from Magic for Beginners have been
published in McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury
of Thrilling Tales, Conjunctions, The Dark,
and One Story. "Stone Animals"
was selected for The Best American Short
Stories: 2005.
Also:
poker cards,
T-shirts.
Interviews
Reviews
"Kelly
Link is the future of American short fiction."
-- Alexis Smith, Powells.com
Staff Pick
"Kelly
Link is the best short-fiction writer working
in science fiction and fantasy today, and
her new collection, Magic for Beginners,
proves it."
-- Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing.net
* Not
only does Link find fresh perspectives from
which to explore familiar premises, she
also forges ingenious connections between
disparate images and narrative approaches
to suggest a convincing alternate logic
that shapes the worlds of her highly original
fantasies."
-- Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"KELLY
LINK has an uncanny knack for casting spells
over her readers, for luring them into the
dark places -- the attic, the underworld,
a realm beneath a hill. These stories bend
and transcend genre as Link stirs together
myth, mystery, horror, and fantasy. Fairy
tales and myths may be timeless, but these
stories are of this moment."
-- Nina MacLaughlin, Boston
Phoenix
"Cult-favorite
fabulist and Shirley Jackson-esque master
of the short story, returns with an eagerly-awaited
new collection of thoughtfully strange tales
that sprinkle the mundane with pixie dust,
a dash of old-fashioned tragedy and a bit
of gallows humor."
-- The Ruminator Review
More
reviews
Advance
Praise
"Kelly
Link owns the most darkly playful voice
in American fiction since Donald Barthelme.
She is pushing the American short story
into places that it hasn't yet been pushed,
while somehow managing to maintain a powerful
connection to traditional forms and storytelling
values."
-- Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures
of Kavalier and Clay
"The
dream-logic of Magic for Beginners
is intoxicating. These stories will come
alive, put on zoot suits, and wrestle you
to the ground. They want you and you will
be theirs."
-- Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
"A
wonderful rattlebag of fantastic tales from
far beyond the concrete sidewalks and convenience
stores we know. Like her first collection,
Magic for Beginners uses humor as
the main prism through which the author
views her mostly hapless or at least happy-go-lucky
characters. The strange attraction of Link's
fiction is that even when you're not really
sure what's going on you're having way too
much fun reading to stop and rereading these
tall tales is a positive pleasure."
-- Rich Rennicks Malaprop's Bookstore/Cafe,
Asheville, NC
"The
stories in Magic for Beginners make
their own strange, perfectly formed sense.
Link creates these familiar, spooky, sometimes
funny worlds with cats parented by witches,
or a cheerleader hanging out with the devil,
or creepifying rabbits. I'm always a little
tense reading these stories. In the very
best way, I never know what is coming next.
If she only parcelled out one elegant sentence
at a time I would beg for each one."
-- Pam Harcourt, Women & Children First,
Chicago, IL
Publication
History
The
Faery Handbag,
The Faery Reel, 2004
-- Hugo Award Winner
-- Locus Award Winner
-- British Fantasy Award Nominee
-- Nebula Award Nominee
-- The Year's Best Fantasy, (Jonathan
Strahan & Karen Harber, eds.)
-- The Year's Best Science Fiction and
Fantasy for Teens (Jane Yolen &
Patrick Nielsen Hayden, eds.)
The Hortlak, The Dark, 2003
-- World Fantasy Award Nominee
The Cannon, Say . . . What Time is It?,
2003
-- SF Hayakawa (Japan, trans. by
Yukiko Kaneko)
-- Simulacrum
Stone Animals, Conjunctions 43,
2004
-- The Best American Short Stories:
2005
-- Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 16
(Stephen Jones, ed.)
Catskin, McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury
of Thrilling Tales, 2003
-- The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror
(Stephen Jones, ed.)
-- The Year's Best Fantasy (David
Hartwell, ed.)
Some Zombie Contingency Plans
-- Bram Stoker Award Finalist
The Great Divorce, One Story, Issue
#59 July 10, 2005
Magic for Beginners
-- British
Science Fiction Award Winner
-- Nebula Award Nominee
-- Hugo Award Nominee
Lull, Conjunctions 39, 2002
-- The Year's Best Fantasy &
Horror XVI (Ellen Datlow & Terri
Windling, eds., St. Martin's)
