Andrews in Scotland (a dazzling, disconcerting coincidence). I was particularly fascinated by the contemporary mythologizing of “Flying Lessons”, which transposed Gods into my very own habitat of St. The pieces that follow range from the delicious horror of “The Specialist’s Hat” and the black magical realism of “Water Off a Black Dog’s Back” to alternative fairy stories like my favourite “Travels with the Snow Queen”. It was definitely enough to make me feel discomforted and emotionally tested (dare I say: excited?).

Thereby we are confronted with the ultimate taboo – the stigma of child death – within a psychological study of adult death. They were reminiscent of an abused, voyeuristic image of our televisual times: the bloated and bald child, pumped with chemo and pale with leukaemia seen on a whole glut of reality TV hospital shows. The “Loolies” were, for me, the most daunting of all Link’s creations. As the world fractures around him, a dozen signs revealing the insecurities of his living years, he is increasingly troubled by silent, spectrous “Loolies”. It is the story of a mind in posthumous disintegration, of a dead man striving to write “home” to his wife (whose name he can no longer remember) from the deserted beach and hotel where he finds himself stranded. She re-brands the happy family, distorting, revealing and galvinising the buried truths of our modern, often pre-packaged lives.įor example, “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose”, which opens the collection is, in many ways, a muted, but haunting taste of what is to come.

“Ruthless” is a good word for Link’s authorial approach – in many of her stories she represents the family, the domestic environment, love, sex and the parental bond with a glassy, sardonic grin. They play on our modern fears…the horrors of the modern environment, of contemporary Western culture. They come in the guise of the contemporary Gothic – not urban or weird or New as such – but packed with the unforeseen and unexpected of everyday. These stories are, by turns, funny and dark, horrifying and charming…and, more often than not, all of the above together. If you love her work you read an interview with Kelly Link.Īndrew O’Hehir of The New York Times Book Review wrote that: “She embraces fantasy in its fullest sense and in doing so transcends all considerations of genre”, and Neil Gaiman called her “the best short story writer currently out there…” Ellen Datlow, John Clute and Sean Stewart all added their own respected voices in praise.Īnd what you get for your $16 (£8) is this: not only an enigmatic splash of cover-art reminiscent (for me at least) of Scooby-Do cartoons (!) but also 11 pieces of delicious and wickedly subterranean short fiction.

Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link