by Kelly Link
ISBN: 1931520003
Link’s book contains eleven fantastic (as in weird, and as in wonderful) short stories.
Stranger things are happening, mostly in this book. There are: letters from the dead, fake noses, creepy old houses, instructions on going to hell, bloody footprints, spying, special toothaches, the power of shoes, alien blondes, ghosts, and dancing girls. That isn’t even a comprehensive list of the strange.
I loved these stories. I loved their twisted fairy tale natures, the matter of factness of the unexpected in them, the cadence and carefulness of the prose. Link has one hell of an imagination. This is how one little girl explains how babies are made:
“You’re lying,” Anna says. “The man and the woman go to the pound. They pick out a dog. They bring the dog home and they feed it baby food. And then one day all the dog’s hair falls out and it’s pink. And it learns how to talk, and it has to wear clothes. And they give it a new name, not a dog name. They give it a baby name and it has to give the dog name back.”
Reading these stories made me want to write. Not that I think I can do what she does in this book, it is more that reading her stories set some gears in my head whirring. I will be re-reading this book, and looking for more Kelly Link stories, that is for sure.
Not too long ago, I noted that all of the smart, quirky authors I was finding were men. I can’t say that anymore. Stranger Things Happen is highly recommended.
