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    Magic for Beginners: Stories
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    Magic for Beginners: Stories
    Unavailable
    Magic for Beginners: Stories
    Audiobook10 hours

    Magic for Beginners: Stories

    Written by Kelly Link

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Perfect for readers of George Saunders, Karen Russell, Neil Gaiman, and Aimee Bender, Magic for Beginners is an exquisite, dreamlike dispatch from a virtuoso storyteller who can do seemingly anything. Kelly Link reconstructs modern life through an intoxicating prism, conjuring up unforgettable worlds with humor and humanity. These stories are at once ingenious and deeply moving. They leave the reader astonished and exhilarated.

    Includes an exclusive conversation between Kelly Link and Joe Hill.

    Read by Mark Bramhall, Cassandra Campbell, Danny Campbell, Robbie Daymond, Kirby Heyborne, Rebecca Lowman, Arthur Morey, Lorna Raver and Meera Simhan.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJul 1, 2014
    ISBN9780553399240
    Unavailable
    Magic for Beginners: Stories
    Author

    Kelly Link

    Kelly Link is the author of four collections, including Pretty Monsters and the Pulitzer finalist Get in Trouble. She is the cofounder of Small Beer Press and lives with her husband and daughter in Northampton, Massachusetts. Visit her at KellyLink.net.

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    Reviews for Magic for Beginners

    4/5

    455 ratings30 reviews

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    • 2/5
      A collection of fantasy-ish short stories, many of which are based on fairy tales. I liked the Snow Queen one, but otherwise they mostly seemed like they were trying too hard to be weird for weirdness' sake. Honestly, if you want good fairy tale rewrites you can get better for free in the Yuletide archive.
    • 4/5
      Bizarre, often echoing stories. Some, including "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose" and "Travels with the Snow Queen", build on their own idiosyncracy and idioms, finding their way to a resonant fruition. A few seem not to have been pursued or developed so thoroughly, leaving the reader with a thoughtscape rather than a world or story, or an ending that seems not to fully reflect and ruminate on what came before.Interesting, daring, and often beautiful stories.
    • 3/5
      Read every other negative review to get the gist of my feelings on this book. Each story feels like it's told from the point-of-view of a completely modern, texting, tweeting, hyper-caffeinated tween girl. The storylines change fluidly and everything is written with an M.C. Escher-esque dream logic, events and characters rearranging themselves based on clever little wordplays. You're given clues to events that later turn out to be false, revelations come and lack impact. One minute you're in a set narrative, the next the story is something else entirely. Every story ends without satisfaction and ultimately has no apparent point (other than the pure whimsy of it all) Each story suffers from this to varying degrees and makes them feel like they were written with an "unreliable narrator" element built-in, even if they don't seem intended to. I don't know, I've read stories by Link that worked and were impressive, but the majority of her work feels like it's written to impress English teachers and other writers with its literary bag of tricks. A little restraint and some narrative cohesion would do her work a world of good. But if you're into dream logic, stream-of-consciousness absurdism, and pure literary whimsy, this should be a dream come true for you.
    • 2/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      There's a tremendous kind of fairy-tale logic in Kelly Link's short stories, and I don't say that just because several of the stories in this collection are or include fairy-tale retellings. It's more to do with the construction of them, the way the stories seem absolutely whole and necessary in themselves even when each piece doesn't necessarily follow logically from the last. They feel true in that fairy-tale kind of way, even when they're obviously fantastical or downright strange. Of the stories in this collection, my favorites are "Flying Lessons," about a modern-day demigod's girlfriend; "Survivor's Ball, or, The Donner Party," about an unusual party met at the end of a long road trip; "Louise's Ghost," about loves lost and ghosts collected; and, as always, "The Specialist's Hat."
    • 4/5
      I can't describe her writing. Best I can do is quote Neal Stephenson. "Stephen King meets Ibsen. Trust me."
    • 4/5
      This collection of weird tales is, I believe, best described as the off-beat among what's usually considered off-beat. They're inventive, depend entirely on the author's fascinating skill of summoning an atmosphere that is at once mundane, creepy, and ungrounded. Link is clearly an author with a chink in her imagination, and the stories she produces are truly wondrous.
    • 3/5
      Not quite as good as Magic for Beginners--less ingenious and not as well thought-out--but I still enjoyed it.
    • 4/5
      Stranger Things Happen is an eerie, ghostly collection of stories by Kelly Link. The stories range from magical realism to the other wordly.My favourite stories from this collection are Travels With The Snow Queen, Vanishing Act, Water Off A Black Dog's Back, The Girl Detective and Survivor's Ball.Travels with the Snow Queen featured my favourite Baz, the reindeer, who called a witch fat and was thus turned into an animal. I wonder if the talking white cat was also once human but I hope not.I've always imagined if my pets could talk they would call me out and speak awful truths.I loved the letter she penned to her ex boyfriend about why he dumped her.Water Off a Black Dog's back was desolate with the question of choosing water or love. I love how she wove that question throughout the story. I feel Rachel's mother was causing her bad luck in the end to push poor Carroll away. The box with the dogs painted on them with red teeth was quite vivid imagery and when they ate his finger off.Most of My Friend's Are Two-Thirds Water crept under my skin due to Jak's obession with blondes that resemble Sandy Duncan. My mother never dicussed my father very often but I did know he loathed Sandy Duncan. I felt a bit of a connection with him due to my shared dislike of that actress. I had to sit through her godawful performance of Peter Pan as a child and loathed ever since. I adore Peter Pan but not Sandy Duncan.Vanishing Act was adorable and made magical realism work in a way Paul Auster could never quite manage for me. It reminded me of an old episode of Nickelodeon's "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" where the dorky cousin is forced to stay with the 90s-cool but so awkwardly dorky by today's standard bully but turned on its head. We only think we know where this story was headed.I felt alternating disgust and pity for poor Jennie Rose just as Hildy did. Her older brother James plight of not wanting to draft and smoking pot was pathetic and sad. He was such a teenager the way young kids view their siblings.Kelly Link always gets each character so right.
    • 4/5
      I got this book as a gift from a friend. It's a short story collection; all of these stories are based, a bit, on fairy tales, except for the last one. "The Girl Detective" is based on my very favorite detective from my childhood, Nancy Drew. I loved that story. Almost all of the stories have two of my favorite subjects heavily involved - one of them being death/being dead. Ahem.

      It's a good book to dive into when you have slightly less time for reading - like during the winter holiday season. Some of the stories might not be everybody's cup of tea, but I liked almost all of them.
    • 5/5
      This book made me return to Short Stories as a viable artform.
    • 5/5
      I get goosebumps on page one. A man writes to his wife from the land of the dead. He cannot seem to remember her name, and only fragments of what their life together was like, but he dutifully goes to the postbox on the seashore to post his letters. The land of the dead is a completely deserted holiday resort under a grey sky, where he stays in a completely empty hotel. Until he finds footprints in the sand one morning.But of course she doesn’t stop there. Here you’ll also meet a Girl Detective out to solve the mystery of the underground tap dancers, the weirdest Miss America competition you’ll ever encounter, instructions on how to go to Hell via the London Underground and blondes gradually taking over the world. Not to mention "The specialist’s hat”, in it’s own peculiar way the creepiest little short story I’ve ever read, I think.This her debut collection (of the meager three she’s published, the third of which is mostly reprints) has a one or two stories where Link’s brand of core-less, meandering story, revolving around recurring images seems not to be completely in place yet. They are therefore harder to get a grip on than in her later books. But these are very minor complaints indeed.I feel like my Kelly Link reviews always are more or less the same. I gush over how there’s no one like her, how her imagination and blend of funny and scary / cryptic and crystal clear is utterly unique. So go read her already.
    • 3/5
      A swan, a bull, a shower of gold, something new, something old, something borrowed, something blue. He seduced Sarah Stoneking in an empty movie house, stepped right off of the screen during the matinee and lisped “Shweetheart” at her. She fell into the old goat’s arms. I know, I was there.Having really enjoyed "Magic for Beginners" I was initially extremely disappointed by this book, as I found the first two stories quite unpleasant to read and wasn't too fond of the third one either. But by the time I had read "Flying Lessons" and "Travels with the Snow Queen", I was feeling better about it as stories based on mythology and fairy tales are much more to my taste. "Survivor's Ball, Or, the Donner Party" was an odd one. I found it quite unnerving, as all the way through it I kept thinking that something really bad was going to happen, but nothing did. So, overall, although I didn't think that this collection was as good as her next one, I'd still say that it's worth reading.
    • 3/5
      Meh.Weird sf short stories. OK ish but nothing special. Few of them worked well, although a couple were creepy ish. Mostly they just stopped without any form of resolution. There appeared to be nothing linking the stories together other than that the author had written them. Not memorable after a couple of days, other than that I wasn't impressed and kept putting the book down mid story to find something esle to do. Which for a short story collection is quite bad.
    • 4/5
      This is the third short story collection by Kelly Link that I have read, although it seems to be the first one she published. This fact can be percieved in the uneven quality of the stories. Link's stories, when they work, are little gems, absolutely perfect. When they don't they are either still pretty good or sometimes they just don't work. In this collection, the proportion of "just don't work" was much higher than in her other collections, but it shouldn't be surprising that as a writer gains experience her work improves. Still, some amazingly good stories could be found in this collection:Vanishing act, Most of my friends are 2/3 water and Louise's ghost, The Specialist hat (which I had already read in Pretty Monsters) and still, Kelly Link has become one of my favourite authors.
    • 3/5
      I bought this book as part of a Humble Bundle (a bundle of books, pay what you want, electronic delivery), and after reading the first story, I wished that I had given more money for the package; a good summation of how I feel about it.Like fairy tales, these short stories take the supernatural for granted - each one has magical components that the characters accept as natural, while responding to the particulars of their situations. I think this is the sort of thing that can tend to get repetitive and predictable after a while. But Link has enough edginess to keep the stories from being saccharine and maintain interest all the way through, and I finished this book and was ready for her next. I should think many short story readers will enjoy this collection, as well as readers who might like to venture out in new directions.
    • 4/5
      I'm so glad I listened to all the friends who told me I needed to read this book. Kelly Link shares stories that unfold like dreams, could be classed as urban fantasy or magical realism, but that really just stand apart as a genre unto themselves, leaving the reader without the comfort of the familiar. These stories have stayed in my head long after I actually read the book, creeping back into my conscious thoughts like a memory of an uncertain encounter.
    • 4/5
      Short stories, beautifully written, but with a tendency to go nowhere. There are a number that are based on legend and fairytale - 'The Snow Queen', 'The Twelve Dancing Princesses' and the Greek pantheon - which worked better for me than the ones based on original ideas. Maybe I just like knowing what to expect.
    • 2/5
      The title of this book isn't very apt. I've never happened across anything stranger than the stories that I read in this collection. I couldn't wrap my head around them. After the third story, I just gave up. Usually I love surreal and weird stories, but these were just too much for me.
    • 5/5
      Beautiful and entertaining, there are some really wonderful stories here. I'm not sure what genre to call it--magic realism?--but she delves into romance, horror, and comedy.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      If you suspect that you might be an ordinary person, one without creativity or imagination... well, then Stranger Things Happen might not appeal to you to begin with, but it certainly won't make you feel any better about your imaginative state. Even if you think you are a fairly creative person, it's hard to believe that you could come close the level of the fantastic and fascinating that Kelly Link achieves in these eleven short stories. A strange combination of fantasy and very modern reality, Link's collection features stories that don't necessarily always work perfectly, but are certainly memorable.As far as the collection goes, these stories are all linked by fairy tales (or mythology) undercurrents and an ethereal tone where the reader understands that not all is as it seems... and the fact that in each of these stories, very real characters (in perhaps not so realistic settings) deal with personal pain and try to somehow make a connection to someone else. On the back cover of my paperback, Andrew O'Hehir is quoted from his NY Times Book Review article as saying that Link's stories "aren't linked to one another, at least not in the sense that they share settings or characters, but they all draw water from the same clear, cold, deep well." I find that to be a profoundly excellent way of explaining the feeling that one is left with at the end of the collection. Not quite ghost stories in a sense of horror, but certainly some blend of Gothic fantasy that yield goosebumps and an eerie atmosphere.Link is a good example of the post-modern storyteller struggling to find a narrative structure that works for each tale, and as a result, few of these pieces are straightforward narratives. I tended to find that the more straightforward stories (well, as straightforward as Link gets) are the ones that I liked a bit more -- I was able to spend more time thinking about the characters and events and less in decoding her narrative intentions/figuring what she was trying to do by mixing things up so completely. (I'm mostly thinking about "The Girl Detective" as I say that, the last in the collection and, for me, the least satisfying.) There is, however, always a way to connect emotionally with these characters, for no matter how strange the circumstances of the story, it's the deeper emotions that make up the truly compelling foundation of each one.It's hard to pick a favorite -- and harder to single one out as being the most memorable -- but if I had to, I think I would go with "Travels with the Snow Queen" as the one I enjoyed most in the collection. Of course, I also feel that might be my shortfalls as a reader, because I found it very easy to relate to that narrator. As a young woman coming to terms with a failed relationship, she walks a path shown in the scars of her shoeless feet and whether she must stick to this path becomes an overpowering question. The reader is led to question the sacrifices of heroines in fairy tales and wonder if the traditional happily ever after with a "hero" is quite worth it or if the heroine might be just as happy pursing some other path. A close second is "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose," where a probably dead man exists in a somewhat limbo-like seaside resort, writing letters to his wife, whose name he cannot remember. The uncertainty of his situation and his clinging to what he believes he knows about his wife and their life paints a very poignant picture. As the first story in the book, it drew me in and assured that I would keep reading. "Flying Lessons" draws heavily on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice (and even a bit of Icarus), but with some swapped gender roles, one feels a greater strength in the heroine so that ultimate happiness might just be possible. (Of course, there's also the looming idea of what happens then, but one must first get to the point where one can seriously ask that question). "Survivor's Ball, or, the Donner Party" features two Americans, strangers, that have decided to travel through New Zealand together for a bit. The narrator is a young man, obviously smitten with his traveling companion, and the girl is named Serena -- which led to me explicitly picturing Blake Lively in the role (as her character in Gossip Girl is also a selfish girl named Serena who easily attracts men and always gets her somewhat self-destructive way). They're driving towards a particular hotel and the news is filled with talk over a missing party of hikers in a snowstorm. Clearly, we understand some implications that are drawn with the title, though the lack of specificity in the story allows the reader to imagine all kinds of interesting results. In "Vanishing Act," a young girl is the only one paying close enough attention to watch her cousin slowly disappear (and aid her in that process) so she can rejoin her parents in faraway countries. One feels pain for this forgotten child, but even more painful is the situation of her cousin, watching a girl who seems to have some power to escape, whereas the cousin is stuck where she is, undeniably corporeal. "Water off a Black Dog's Back" features a strange relationship between a young man whose relationship with a girl and her family seems to involve some bodily sacrifice and an acceptance of whatever nonhuman nature they might possess. "Shoes and Marriage" features for vignettes that focus on variations of Cinderella, a beauty pageant and Dorothy/her companions, Imelda Marcos (a dictator's wife hoards the shoes of the people her husband has killed), and a fortune-teller's predictions. With a common theme of shoes (and, well, marriage), I enjoyed all of the vignettes, but I'm not sure how well the piece worked as a whole. I didn't much enjoy "Most of My Friends Are Two-Thirds Water," where the narrator is hopelessly in love with a friend that doesn't think much of her at all, beyond her usefulness as a person who will listen to him. He's too preoccupied with the question of whether the women in the world are turning into aliens. "Louise's Ghost" deals with two best friends named Louise, which made things challenging, but interesting, as Link was able to really play with the question of where they blended into the other and where they were decidedly distinct. "The Girl Detective" touches upon the fairy tale of the twelve dancing princesses and the idea of lost mothers. Unwittingly, I seem to have found an order of my favorites in this collection by describing them, but I'm also struck with the fact that, even though I had to look for some exact titles, I was able to remember every single story in the series without forgetting a one.I took my time in reading Stranger Things Happen, keeping it for subway rides so I could swallow it in small bites and frequently pause to consider the ideas at play. At moments, I would have no idea where Link was taking us or why -- and at others, I felt profoundly moved. I'm fairly sure that some alchemy is at play in her words where it's possible for two people to read the exact same Link story and yet come out with completely different experiences and understandings of what happened. Link trusts the reader to draw his or her own conclusions, and often, that's what yields a spookier result. She's not afraid of open-ended ideas that have no precise answer. Several stories end without a single resolution, and so the reader is left to imagine all kinds of results. While the stories themselves might be open for interpretation, I find that one thing is certain: Kelly Link is a master of the short story.
    • 4/5
      Very interesting, almost Shirley Jacksonesque, in her own kind of way
    • 3/5
      stories: Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose / Water Off a Black Dog's Back / The Specialist's Hat / Flying Lessons / Travels with the Snow Queen / Vanishing Act / Survivor's Ball, or, The Donner Party / Shoe and Marriage / Most of My Friends Are Two-Thirds Water / Louise's Ghost / The Girl DetectiveThis would be the third collection of Link's stories that I've read...though I believe it's the first she published. "Shoe and Marriage" and "Louise's Ghost" were among my favorites from this book, but I enjoyed the distinctive Linkian quirkiness of the whole collection.
    • 5/5
      I adored these stories, they are like crazy fairy tales on crack. Not crack, actually, more like some sort of odd hallucinogen.
    • 5/5
      Loved it. It is a somewhat uneven collection, but the stories that I initially found to be weaker have grown on me, and the best stories just get better. Some of the stories were more goal-oriented than others, and I think I generally preferred the former type; but with the latter, if I was left a bit unsatisfied at the end, I at least enjoyed the dreamy, slightly unsettling atmospheres and the imaginative settings.I saved "Travels With the Snow Queen" for last, and I was glad that I did: that story alone is worth the price of admission. Brilliantly conceived, funny, and oddly touching. I particularly love Link's use of fairy tale material--these stories come complete with lopped-off pinkies, trifold objects/characters/tales, talking animals, and musings on just how hard fairy tales are on females' feet. Sleeping Beauty is in there, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, the twelve dancing princesses, Orpheus and Eurydice, and more, all wonderfully reinvented and/or subverted.So, for the stand-out stories, "Travels With the Snow Queen" was great (playing off of the Hans Christian Andersen tale as well as other well-known fairy tales);"Vanishing Act" (a young girl's missionary parents leave her with her aunt, uncle and cousins, so the homesick girl learns how to "disappear herself" back with them, as her female cousin watches her household fall apart);"Shoe and Marriage" (a three-part tale--a reworking of Cinderella, a honeymooning couple watches a surreal beauty pageant that includes Dorothy and her ruby red shoes as Miss Kansas (the beauty pageant scene is unforgettable), and the reluctant wife of a dictator saves the shoes of all the people that he has had murdered);and "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose" (a dead man in a strange beach hotel writes letters to his still-living wife, whose name he cannot remember).
    • 4/5
      Really good stories set between real world and fantasy/ fairy tale/ mythology worlds. A couple of the stories are absolutely prefect!
    • 4/5
      Stranger Things Happen is Kelly Link''s first collection of short stories, but I'm reading it second. Overall, I think I preferred the second collection - Magic for Beginners, whose stories seemed more polished and more sure of themselves - but this is still an entertaining collection that straddles genres. There's a few that didn't really work for me, where it felt more as if Link was putting out half-thought ideas rather than fully formed stories, but when she gets it right, she really does. She has a sharp eye for language that gives her characters a quick liveliness, and there are some nifty ideas jumping around.This collection, which comes back to the idea of fairy tales more than once, reads like a blend of Angela Carter, Ursula Le Guin and Neil Gaiman; the succeeding collection has more of a feel of an author writing with her own strong voice. I look forward to seeing what she does next.
    • 3/5
      Link's first collection of short stories feels slightly more uneven than her second (Magic For Beginners). Once again, she displays a flair for crossing genres and combining elements of sci-fi, fantasy, fairy tale, detective story, horror, and comedy. While I don't always mind her penchant for digression within a story, I felt a couple of these pieces wandered a bit. My favorite stories included "Vanishing Act," "Louise's Ghost," "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose," and "Water Off a Black Dog's Back."
    • 5/5
      Kelly Link is one of the best short story writers currently typing away. I'm still amazed how she manages to craft such brilliant tales.