Pretty Monsters
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author Kelly Link presents a “dazzling” (Entertainment Weekly) collection of nine short stories that explore the complexity of loss, identity, and the absurdity that is life.
“Flat-out genius.”—Holly Black, internationally bestselling author of The Cruel Prince
“Kelly Link is a sorceress to be reckoned with.”—The New York Times Book Review
Through the lens of Kelly Link’s vivid imagination, nothing is what it seems, and everything deserves a second look. These nine stories are full of unexpected insights, skewed perspectives on the world, and . . .
• A phone booth in Las Vegas
• Aliens
• Unhelpful wizards
• Possibly carnivorous sofas
• A handbag with a village inside it
• Tennessee Fainting Goats
• Dueling librarians
• A statue of George Washington
• A boy named Orion
• Pirates
• An undead babysitter
• A nationally ranked soccer player
• Shapeshifters
• An unexpected campfire guest
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Readers as yet unfamiliar with Link (Magic for Beginners) will be excited to discover her singular voice in this collection of nine short stories, her first book for young adults. The first entry, "The Wrong Grave," immediately demonstrates her rare talents: a deadpan narration that conceals the author's metafictional sleight-of-hand ("Miles had always been impulsive. I think you should know that right up front"); subjects that range from absurd to mundane, all observed with equidistant irony. Miles, hoping to recover the poems he's buried with his dead girlfriend, digs up what appears to be the wrong corpse ("It's a mistake anyone could make," interjects the narrator), who regains life and visits her mother, a lapsed Buddhist ("Mrs. Baldwin had taken her Buddhism very seriously, once, before substitute teaching had knocked it out of her'). Other stories have more overtly magical or intertextual themes; in each, Link's peppering of her prose with random associations dislocates readers from the ordinary. With a quirky, fairytale style evocative of Neil Gaiman, the author mingles the grotesque and the ethereal to make magic on the page. Ages 12 up.
