|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
September 26-October 2, 2002 artpicks Kelly LinkThere's a certain delight in genre bending. Just look at acknowledged masters like Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Lethem. Add to their ranks one Kelly Link, who is the best writer you've never heard of. Her Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning short stories have been amassed in a collection of quirky delights, Stranger Things Happen (Small Beer Press). Link has an uncanny ability to take all the things that have been done before, chop them up finer than the parts of a Burroughsian collage, toss them into a Ziploc bag and shake vigorously. The results are both fabulist and fabulous. Her ghost stories are more subtly piercing than any of Shyamalan's, and Ms. New Jersey's got nothing on Link's pageantry: Her version has horns. Link even upends the various myths set in scenic Hades by sending your favorite generic teen sleuth on a quest to retrieve her mother. Her prose is like a taut and shiny wire, which slices through the confines of fantasy, mystery, romance, and horror and drops the resulting narrative squat in the middle of that life you're living right now. Pick it up carefully: Link's magic has a way of stepping off the page and into your lap. Kelly Link will read and sign, Fri., Sept. 27, 7:30 p.m., Barnes & Noble, 1805 Walnut St., 215-665-0716. 
-- Respond to this article in our Forums -- click to jump there
| ||||||||||||||||||
