Book Review: Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link

I’m excited because it’s only once in a great while that I discover an author who I want to follow. By “follow” I don’t mean it in the traditional monster-wise sense of the word as in “to stalk, with the intent of rending limb from limb” or even the new more socially-conscious but still monster-specific “to appear suddenly as if from nowhere and bury a hatchet into after having pretended to be dead or no longer interested.” (How, I ask, did the world get so complicated?)  To get back to the topic – by “follow” I mean to scan new release announcements and news for her name like I do with Susanna Clarke. I felt that way about Kelly Link about a quarter of the way through this book. Here’s one of my favorite paragraphs from Pretty Monsters, by Kelly Link:

The wizards of Perfil are lazy and useless. They hate to climb stairs and they never listen when you talk. They don’t answer questions because their ears are full of beetles and wax and their faces are wrinkled and hideous. Marsh fairies live deep in the wrinkles of the faces of the wizards of Perfil and the marsh fairies ride around in the bottomless canyons of the wrinkles on saddle-broken fleas who grow fat grazing on magical, wizardly blood. The wizards of Perfil spend all night scratching their fleabites and sleep all day. I’d rather be a scullery maid than a servant of the invisible, doddering, nearly blind, flea-bitten, mildewy, clammy-fingered, conceited marsh-wizards of Perfil.

This description of the mysterious Wizards of Perfil is so many flavors of awesome I don’t even know where to start. Pretty Monsters is a collection of nine stories by Kelly Link. The target audience of this book is young adults, although I think that in most of the stories, there’s enough here that an adult could get into them as well. As it usually goes with collections, there is enough variety that most people will find something they like.

The Wrong Grave - The wrong grave sets the tone of the collection very well. This being: Whatever you were expecting when you picked up this book, you were mistaken. This story, like all the rest of the stories in the book, is wildly imaginative, entertaining, and unconventional. Although the story begins as a portrait of puppy love gone awry, and seems to be about a boy who is making some serious mistakes, it ends up being more of a tale about how people change and grow over time, and how that process is mysterious. This amazingly short, very simple story is built on a very deep truth and has something important to say about the nature of love and humanity (not that I would know much about that because I’m A MONSTER.) I bet that sounds like I’m overstating the case, but after reading this story my expectations for the book went many notches higher.

The Wizards of Perfil – Another really amazing story about the nature of love and our personal interactions. This story is insanely imaginative, and reads very much like how Jorge Luis Borges might update an authentic Grimm’s Fairy Tale. Two of the reviewers on the back cover of this book compare Link to Borges, and I think the comparison is fair.

Magic for Beginners – Also very reminiscent of Borges, but even more so of Douglas Adams, in that it is endlessly imaginative. Each page of this story has several ideas that could each be their own story. Magic for Beginners is about some teenage fans of a TV show that may or may not be real. The story includes a poignant teenage love triangle and the marital troubles of the protagonist’s parents. Both relationships are presented with the complexity and depth that they would have in real life. Add to this an unending imaginative discourse on the TV show and its characters, and you’ve got Magic for Beginners.

The Faery Handbag – Another contemporary take on a classic subject. This was good, but I think it could have used some more humor, or some more darkness.

The Specialist’s Hat – The scariest story of the lot, this is a ghost story in the best tradition of M.R. James. It is a short, sweet, and richly complex tale about the mysterious fate of two little girls who are sisters. The reader is left having to make up their mind who the real ghosts in the story were, who is lost, and who is saved. I loved this story. It’s the best thing I’ve read so far this year, and could end up being the champion of 2009. As a bonus, this story can be imagined with Edward Gorey characters and settings.

Monster – A very strangely conventional but absurd summer camp monster tale. Complete with bullying kids and lots of blood.

The Surfer – Cyberpunk dystopian cautionary tale of a plague-ridden future but populated with teenagers and a UFO abduction paperback guru. A tad slow but still interesting and with a wholly unexpected ending.

The Constable of Abal – Again another complex and fascinating tale about the nature of love, fate, and how we perceive one another. Especially how these perceptions can change or how the people we love can possess hidden potentialities. A witch/con-artist mother and her daughter, both of whom can summon and trap ghosts, are forced to leave town when the mother murders a handsome constable.

Pretty Monsters – It seems like in a collection like this, there will always be a story you don’t like. Like the rest of the stories in the book, Pretty Monsters is built on an interesting idea. Maybe this one just wasn’t my cup of tea. Anyhow…

The real strength of this book and Link’s writing seems to be about the relationships between the characters. As in real life, not all of these relationships are peaceful or even happy (although some are.) Link portrays all of them with an unflinching eye and the result is stories with emotional depth, warmth, pain, and even real terror. Add to this an amazing imagination, monsters, ghosts, dead girls, and magical hats, and you’ve got a real winner.

Creepy Factor: 3 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 4 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 2 out of 5 (if you call vague teenaged confusion about romance “erotic”)
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 4 out of 5

Final result: I thought Pretty Monsters was an awesome book. I’m definitely going to look for Link in the future, and am going back to her last two books to see what I missed.

Have you read this book? Did you immediately think of Edward Gorey when you read The Specialist’s Hat? Am I totally dysfunctional? I’m still bewitched, bothered, and love-sick over the Beldam, Coraline’s Other Mother.

Pretty Monsters – Kelly Link – Illustrations by Shaun Tan – Viking Juvenile – 2008

Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link on Amazon

Thanks for reading another one of my book reviews. Hopefully next time I review a nice juicy horror novel with loads of Weird Erotic Tension. I’m working on it! See you next time!