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Loading... Stranger Things Happen: Stories (2001)by Kelly Link
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I guess technically I should be marking this as DNF, but I didn't despise it enough for that label, so I'll just mark it as Read* . I made it to 25% (first three stories). They were fine, but not genre (or, being kind, not genre enough). Not quite reality-based, either. I think that I'll just have to classify them as "bleh..." Kelly Link's collection of short stories take place at various locations around the world, most with a young woman as protagonist. The tales, for the most part, are grounded in reality but contain elements of fantasy, fairy tale, or horror as if each story is haunted by something outside of reality. Some stories are better than others but I didn't find any of them particularly satisfying, if that's even something one can ask of fiction. Still Link has a vivid imagination and as this was her first story collection it could be worth checking out her more recent fiction. One thing I do need to do is make a note about where I find out of books I add to be reading list. While I didn't particularly enjoy this book, I am glad I read it, and I really wonder what inspired me to put on my TBR list in the first place. This is a book of ghost stories, though they aren't actually about ghosts. Rather, the stories themselves are ephemeral, floaty things, oddly based in reality while just barely touching on the supernatural. They have the same general feeling as what you'd hear around the campfire as a young child, not necessarily frightening, just strange. Weird. They all cover different topics, different themes, but there's that common tone underlying them all; that sense of something strange, something beyond. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesGallimard, Folio SF (398) ContainsAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
This first collection by award-winning author Kelly Link takes fairy tales and cautionary tales, dictators and extraterrestrials, amnesiacs and honeymooners, revenants and readers alike, on a voyage into new, strange, and wonderful territory. 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. A newly married couple become participants in an apocalyptic beauty pageant. Sexy blond aliens invade New York City. A young girl learns how to make herself disappear. These eleven extraordinary stories are quirky, spooky, and smart. They all have happy endings. Every story contains a secret prize. Each story was written especially for you. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. Small Beer PressAn edition of this book was published by Small Beer Press. |
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. ( )