"The Faery Handbag" by Kelly Link
in Magic for Beginners (Small Beer Press)
Kelly Link's fiction keeps getting better and better. Her debut collection, Stranger Things Happen, was a knockout. And her new collection is even stronger.
Link's voice is unique, quirky, immediately recognizable, and mischievously seductive. Her work reminds me in many ways of R.A. Lafferty's, especially in the way she mythologizes events and characters.
She's very deft with delivering apt quips at opportune moments. She's very clever, but always playfully so, never arch or condescending.
"The Faery Handbag" is both funny and dark. It mixes oblique allusions with matter-of-fact bluntness to great effect. Its cast is enchanting. It's also a very moving tale -- and wonderfully, deliriously strange.
07 August 2005
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For those who haven't tried Kelly Link's short fiction, her first collection, Stranger Things Happen, is available as a free download under a Creative Commons licence.
Don't miss Link's other story published in 2004, "Stone Animals." "Handbag" is certainly wonderful and has deservedly garnered a lot of accolades, but it's too bad that "Stone Animals" is being all but ignored, as I believe it is actually a story of greater depth and accomplishment.
That's a great story, too. Most of the book is absolutely astonishing. Although my favourite is "The Hortlak" -- but I'd read it before, so I picked "The Faery Handbag" as my favourite because it was new to me.
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