Get In Trouble
Stories
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A new, much anticipated collection of stories from the inimitable Kelly Link.
'These nine stories may begin in familiar territory - a birthday party, a theme park, a bar, a spaceship - but they quickly draw readers into an imaginative, disturbingly ominous world of realistic fantasy and unreal reality. Like Kafka hosting Saturday Night Live, Link mixes humour with existential dread...Her characters, driven by yearning and obsession, not only get in trouble but seek trouble out - to spectacular effect.' Publishers Weekly
'Darkly funny, sexy, frightening, and truly weird - Link can dismantle and remake the world in a paragraph.' Karen Russell
'The most darkly playful voice in American fiction.' Michael Chabon
'She is unique and should be declared a national treasure.' Neil Gaiman
'Richly imagined, intellectually teasing: these are not so much small fictions as windows on to entire worlds. A brilliant, giddying read.' Sarah Waters
Kelly Link is the author of the collections Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, The Wrong Grave and Pretty Monsters. 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. Link is the co-founder of Small Beer Press. She was born in Miami, Florida and now lives with her husband and daughter in Northampton, Massachusetts.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
These nine stories may begin in familiar territory a birthday party, a theme park, a bar, a spaceship but they quickly draw readers into an imaginative, disturbingly ominous world of realistic fantasy and unreal reality. Like Kafka hosting Saturday Night Live, Link mixes humor with existential dread. The first story, entitled "The Summer People," in homage to Shirley Jackson, follows an Appalachian schoolgirl, abandoned by her moonshiner father, as she looks after a summer house occupied by mysterious beings. "I Can See Right Through You" features friends who, in their youth, were movie stars; now in middle age, she is the hostess and he is the guest star of a television show about hunting ghosts at a Florida nudist colony. "Origin Story" takes place in a deserted Land of Oz theme park; "Secret Identity" is set at a hotel where dentists and superheroes attend simultaneous conferences. Only in a Link story would you encounter Mann Man, a superhero with the powers of Thomas Mann, or visit a world with pools overrun by Disney mermaids. Details a bruise-green sky, a Beretta dotted with Hello Kitty stickers bring the unimaginable to unnerving life. Each carefully crafted tale forms its own pocket universe, at once ordinary (a teenage girl adores and resents her BFF) and bizarre (...therefore she tries to steal the BFF's robot vampire boyfriend doll). Link's characters, driven by yearning and obsession, not only get in trouble but seek trouble out to spectacular effect.
