Book Review Blurb: Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link

Ugh, you’d think I’d learn… Short story collections and I are not meant for each other. Granted, I do know that and so rarely expect to enjoy every story in a collection. But I’m still always surprised at how uneven I tend to find the writing in them… This was a prime example. I’d heard such great things about Kelly Link – and the first story in this book, “The Wrong Grave”, was a stellar introduction. Link writes weird, random, quirky, bizarre stories populated by weird, random, quirky, bizarre characters engaged in weird, random, quirky, bizarre activities. I like that – in theory. In practice, well… Let’s just say that when it works, it works in an absolutely first-rate way. And when it doesn’t, it fails equally spectacularly…

There are a couple of phenomenal stories in this book – in addition to TWG, I really liked “The Faery Handbag” and “Magic for Beginners” (although even those had their moments) – but the majority felt weird for the sake of being weird. A couple would be clicking along, seeming to be on track for greatness, then take a one-eighty and go entirely off the rails into either complete and utter randomness, a full-on dead stop, or an eye-squinting, head-shaking sense of disbelief. And the others never even got past the gate for me. I don’t know if I’m too old, too uncool, or too something else for Kelly Link, but I was disappointed – I wanted to like these, and I wanted them all to be as compelling as the few that really resonated for me. But I didn’t, and they weren’t. Still, I would be inclined to give her writing another look – when it works, it works with a dark snarky witticism that I really really enjoyed. It’s worth a flip-through to find those diamonds in the rough…