“Stone Animals” by Kelly Link - A Short Story - included in Magic for Beginners - 2006

 

“Stone Animals” by Kelly Link - A Short Story - included in Magic for Beginners - 2006

Kelly Link was a 2018 MacArthur Genius Grant winner.  The announcement on the MacArthur Website has a very good over view of her importance.

Website  of Kelly Link- Today’s story and several others are linked here.

My post from May 22, 2015 on “Valley of the Girls” by Kelly Link

Seven years ago i first read a story by Kelly Link, two years ago I read her “The Fairy Handbag”.  

“Stone Animals” starts out as a mainstream family life story.  A married couple, mid-thirties, with a two young children are preparing  to move from their apartment to their first house. The children are apprehensive, the adults excited. He works in real estate, she stays home. Things slowly get very strange.

The new house has two stone animals at the entrance.  The yard has a lot of wild rabbits.  You may never look at rabbits the same way after this story.

I just do not want go too much into this tremendously fun, thought provoking story.  The more I got into it, fifty four pages, the more intrigued I became and I want others to have this opporunity. 

I also read this month from the same collection, “Catskin”, which enthralled me.  A great Witch story. I still have six stories left to read in Magic for Beginners as well as eight in her second collection, Get in Trouble.

“Kelly Link is the author of the collections Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, Pretty Monsters, and Get in Trouble. Her short stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. She is a 2018 MacArthur Fellow and has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She and Gavin J. Grant have co-edited a number of anthologies, including multiple volumes of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and, for young adults, Steampunk! and Monstrous Affections. She is the co-founder of Small Beer Press and co-edits the occasional zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

Link was born in Miami, Florida. She currently lives with her husband and daughter, dog, and chickens in Northampton, Massachusetts.” From Kellylink.net

Mel Ulm

“The Faery Handbag” - A Short Story - 2005 -Lead work in her collection Magic for Beginners.

“The Faery Handbag” - A Short Story - 2005 -Lead work in her collection Magic for Beginners.

The Fairy Handbag" was the winner of the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Novelette, the 2006 Nebula Award for Best Novelette, and the 2005 Locus Award for Best Novelette. It was also nominated for the 2005 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story

Kelly Link was a 2018 MacArthur Genius Grant winner.  The announcement on the MacArthur Website has a very good over view of her importance.

Website  of Kelly Link- Today’s story and several others are linked here.

My post from May 22, 2015 on “Valley of the Girls” by Kelly Link

As i concluded my post on “Valley of The Dolls” by Kelly Link I remarked I wanted to read more of her stories soon.  Soon has turned into a five year hiatus.

“The Fairy Handbag” is the lead story in Kelly Link’s collection, Magic for Beginners.  I like stories about fairies so I read it.  It is tremendously fun, imaginative and a perfect lock down read taking you far from mundanities of this grim period.

The story revolves around Genevieve, a girl in her early teens, and her relationship to her a bit strange grandmother and a magic handbag of dog skin.

“Zofia claims to be from the country Baldeziwurlekistan and also to be the guardian of a community of fairies who now live in her black handbag. She often tells outlandish tales about the beings in her handbag and blames them for her overdue movies and library books. Things take a turn for the worse when Genevieve's boyfriend, Jake, snatches Zofia's handbag with the intent of finding out if the stories about it are true.” From Wikepedia

I Googled Baldeziwurlekistan, it seems purely fictional but perhaps in western Armenia.  When ever villagers in Baldeziwurlekistan
are threatened by raiders they retreat into a Handbag made of Dog skin.  There is magic at work here.  A person can stay in the handbag twenty years.  When they emerge twenty years have past, but they are only three days older. Sofia’s grandmother was the guardian of the handbag.  Unfortunately it got sold to a big vintage clothing market by Genevieve’s boyfriend.

As I said five years ago, I hope to read more stories by Kelly Link soon.

"Valley of the Girls" by Kelly Link (2011, included in Get in Trouble)

This afternoon I wanted to read a short story by an established writer whose work I have not yet experienced.   My "problem" was I did not know which of the 3000 plus short stories on my E-Reader to read.  I opened more or less at random New American Short Stories edited by Benjamin Marcus and "Valley of the Girls" by Kelly Link came up on the screen.  Problem solved.

"Valley of the Girls" is set in one I would describe as a kind of alternative universe.  It is post 20th century but many of the ideas of Ancient Egypt about the after life, including burial in pyramids and mummification persist.  The teller of the story is a young woman from the upper classes.  There are strange customs, not all real easy to understand.  It seems like the woman may be sealed up alive in a tomb as the story closes but she does not clearly know that.  I really liked this story and hope to read more of the work of Kelly Link.

Kelly Link is the author of the collections Get in Trouble, Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, and Pretty Monsters. She and Gavin J. Grant have co-edited a number of anthologies, including multiple volumes of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and, for young adults, Monstrous Affections. She is the cofounder of Small Beer Press. Her short stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Link was born in Miami, Florida. She currently lives with her husband and daughter in Northampton, Massachusetts. from New American Short Stories

Mel u