Review – Stranger Things Happen – Kelly Link
Quirky short stories – 82,000 words
Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link is a collection of eleven short stories. It’s available in various formats, including ePub and Kindle, at Feedbooks. Kelly has released the digital version under a Creative Commons license, bless her heart, so it’s free to download and read.
As I was reading Stranger Things Happen I found myself thinking of Roald Dahl, especially the kind of short stories he published in Tales of the Unexpected. I was also reminded of Ray Bradbury’s October Country. The characters and events are almost ordinary, except they’re not. You quickly learn to accept that you will be taken places and shown things that are anything but ordinary.
The man who can’t remember his name, writing letters to his wife, whose name he can’t remember either? He might be dead. The librarian whose girlfriend takes him to meet her parents. Her mother has a wooden leg and her father a collection of false noses, which he needs. The librarian has to learn what it is to lose something. The young woman who walks across half a continent on broken glass to retrieve her young man from the Snow Queen. The young man who picks up a beautiful young hitchhiker on the way to Milford Sound. Every story is filled with vivid images of worlds that are slightly off. If, like me, you have an occasional taste for quirky stories, you should enjoy Stranger Things Happen.
Visit Feedbooks to download Stranger Things Happen, and visit Kelly Link’s website to see what else she’s up to. Visit Vulture to read an interview.
rjb
