Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners (Small Beer Press, 2006)
Kelly Link's second collection, Magic for Beginners, is undeniably quirky, and sometimes very creepy, and yet I found I was able to wrap myself up in her stories as comfortably as I would a favourite blanket. The title, taken from one of the collected short stories, is appropriate for another reason. These stories really are about the feeling of magic in the air, of anything being possible, the feeling we experienced when it was all new, when we were beginning scholars of fairy tales and ghost stories, and initiates to the wide world itself.
This is the crux of magic realism. The mundane is peppered with the fantastic, but it doesn't feel out of place. In fact, the magic is what makes it so believable. Because when we were 15 and in love with our best friend, girls were potentially from a faerie realm, and that had to be magic prickling the hairs on our arms.
Link's title story is about just that. Jeremy Mars has a group of friends united by their love of a pirate TV show, which shows up without warning on random channels where there is normally only static, and for which no producers, writers, or directors take any credit. No one's sure when the next episode will be so they can find out whether Fox is really dead, and everyone is anxious to find out. Meanwhile, Jeremy is in a state of perpetual confusion about the feelings and motivations of the girls in his life, his friend Karl's mad at him, his parents are behaving strangely, and he's inherited a phonebooth in Nevada from his great-aunt. And we haven't gotten to the magic yet.
The magic is sometimes matter of fact, sometimes surprising, sometimes subtle, and sometimes almost superfluous. Almost. In "The Hortlak," Eric works and lives in a convenience store, along with the only other employee, Batu. They each work twelve hours a day, seven days a week, because headquarters stopped replacing employees, and even the manager, after they'd quit. Batu insists the store is the perfect place to raise a family, there are storage closets to sleep in, and everything you could possibly need without ever leaving the place. Eric is in a transition period, he'd ended up at the store on his way to somewhere else, and now he lives and works on the side of the highway, across which is a bluff that leads down to, apparently, zombies.
In "Lull," a group of middle-aged fathers is enjoying their weekly poker night when there is a lull in the conversation. Somebody suggests calling a number, a semi-erotic phone service that provides unusual stories, created off the cuff by request. The sultry lady on the other end starts making unsettling personal references while spinning her tale. Story within story within story collapse, and how will it all end up?
Ultimately, all these stories are about the characters, and their personal challenges. Supernatural elements act as catalysts, metaphor, or provide atmosphere, but resolution usually occurs internally, or sometimes not at all, because in real life, emotional chapters do not always close completely or neatly. If you like character-driven fiction, you will probably enjoy Link's stories, because you will certainly grow to care about the people in them. If you're looking for something more straightforward in terms of plot, other traditional or contemporary fantasy may be more to your liking. I think you'd be missing out, though.
