So in a synchronous moment, I read a Boston Phoenix article about Pretty Monsters, the new Kelly Link collection the night before I opened up a Best American Short Stories collection to "Stone Animals", one of my favorite of her stories (from the Magic for Beginners book).
What fun. Link's stories are glib examinations of the intersection of the normal world with that of the supernatural. Bizarre things happen and yet no one ever bats an eye. Toasters become haunted, rabbits build underground skyscrapers, and people try to live their lives amidst the fascinating chaos. Throughout it all, Link's narration dryly presents and comments upon the action: "[she] yanked at the hem of the skirt of her pink linen suit, which seemed as if it might, at any moment, go rolling up her knees like a window shade."
Or this: "Babies weren't babies, they were land mines, bear traps, wasp nests. They were a noise, which was sometimes even not a noise, but merely a listening for a noise; they were a damp, chalky smell; they were the heaving, jerky, sticky manifestation of not-sleep."
This is good stuff. Even her stories that don't really succeed are entertaining. Pick one up today!
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