Pretty Monsters
Stories
Book - 2010
Through the lens of Kelly Link's vivid imagination, nothing is what it seems, and everything deserves a second look. From the multiple award- winning "The Faery Handbag," in which a teenager's grandmother carries an entire village (or is it a man-eating dog?) in her handbag, to the near-future of "The Surfer," whose narrator (a soccer-playing skeptic) waits with a planeload of refugees for the aliens to arrive, these ten stories are funny and full of unexpected insights and skewed perspectives on the world.
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Publisher:
New York, New York :, Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,, 2010.
Copyright Date:
©2010
ISBN:
9780142416723
014241672X
014241672X
Characteristics:
404 pages :,illustrations ;,21 cm.
Additional Contributors:
Opinion
From the critics
Community Activity
Quotes
Add a Quote"I need you to steal three books," Fox says. "From a library in a place called Iowa."
"I know Iowa," Jeremy says. "I mean, I've never been there, but it's a real place. I could go there."
"I'm going to tell you the books you need to steal," Fox says. "Author, title, and the jewelly festival number--"
"Dewey decimal," Jeremy says. "It's actually called the Dewey decimal number in real libraries."
"Real," Fox says, sounding amused.
Comment
Add a CommentAll the stories from this collection are well done, and a couple are astounding. (place holder... more review later)
OK, I'm back - still in a quandary. Dreamlike, tapping into her sub-conscious or our collective unconscious? Maybe. Magic-realism? Gives one some of the same feel as Kafka or Borges or Vonnegut without being like them really?
This much I can say: the stories are full of surprise & the tingling shock of recognition as the author plucks a resonant chord in our minds, that impossible things are plausible, that there is energy here - a kind of magic.
I really wanted to enjoy all of these stories, but many were just dull . If the entire collection held up to the beauty that "The Wrong Grave" and "Wizards of Perfil" are...eating it up would have been a no brainer.
Link collects her short stories in this volume; some of them reprints from previous anthologies. Her writing style is straightforward and fantastical, somewhat dark, but better suited for younger audiences. Her stories combine things like ghosts, monsters, ufos, dead girls, camp stories, gods and goddesses, wizards and fairy handbags, all to an indescribable effect.
This is a creepy, funny, clever collection of stories that will appeal to adults and teens. Recommended for fans of Neil Gaiman.
Creepy and marvellous.
These stories are dark but funny. This was very enjoyable but won't appeal to all teens. It's complicated and post-modern with stories within stories within stories. There's a lot of metafiction, where the reader is made aware they are reading.
Creative and interesting but few of the stories have satisfying endings.
Amazingly inventive,and wonderfully stylish, Pretty Monsters is a short story collection not to be missed.