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.

Kelly Link's collection of short stories was my first exposure to any of her writings. I'd never heard of her before and had no idea what to expect. Having finished Stranger Things Happen I'm pleasantly surprised but also a tiny bit disappointed.

She has a wonderful knack for creating some unique characters and situations, but many of the stories themselves feel only half-formed. I came away from many of the stories thinking they lacked any sort of focus or denouement. Maybe it's the sort of book that will benefit from multiple readings but at the moment I'm not inclined to pick this back up any time soon.

A book of surreal short stories that would vie with Hurakami for the strangest stories I've ever read. Unlike Hurakami, however, there is no Kafkaesque feeling of alienation; the odd people in these stories seem generally content with the craziness of their lives. What kind of stories are these? Here's a list from the back cover: “The girl detective must go to the underworld to solve the case of the tap-dancing bank robbers. A librarian falls in love with a girl whose father collects artificial noses. A dead man posts letters home to his estranged wife. Two women named Louise begin a series of consecutive love affairs with a string of cellists....”

Sometimes, when I read odd stories like these, I get the feeling the author is just trying to be weird in order to be weird. I didn't feel that way while reading this book. Reading the stories felt like the author was relating them exactly as he'd seen them in a vision or a dream.

I'd have to say that even though I read all the way to the end I'm not sure how much I took away from the book. I didn't remember any of the details of the book until I looked over the story titles.

Fairy tales with a pervasive sense of unease. More grim than Grimm. And while Link is capable of turning a phrase I kept looking for some sort of internal logic at work in each of the stories. It's funny how so many of the reviews apologize for their mediocre ratings. There is a sense that each story hints at something larger - or maybe we're just programmed to look for the metaphor in fairytales. I just couldn't unravel it and as a result each short story felt unresolved and meandering.

Part of the Humble Ebook Bundle which I'm still excited to work my way through.