PRETTY MONSTERS
By KELLY LINK

Viking Juvenile, 2008
ISBN: 9780670010905
400 pages, Hardcover
GENRE(S): Fiction, Short Stories, Young Adult

Reviewed by Bri Lafond

Kelly Link is back with another collection of short stories. Pretty Monsters is marketed towards a young adult audience, combining a few of Link's older stories with a new batch that have more YA protagonists than is typical for her. For young readers, this collection makes a great introduction to Link's work and the short story form, and it is a good transition piece from similarly-themed yet far more vapid YA works like the ever-popular Twilight series.

"Magic for Beginners" and "The Faery Handbag" from Link's popular Magic for Beginners and the spooky "The Specialist's Hat" from Stranger Things Happen are included, but Pretty Monsters is not just a re-packaged re-treading of Link's older work. There are also six brand new stories for readers to enjoy, and older readers will enjoy revisiting old favorites like "Magic for Beginners" and seeing her try out some new thematic tricks.

Link's work is often referred to as slipstream or by her own phrase "kitchen sink magic realism." Though elements of magical realism are present here, Link toys with genre in this collection to a greater extent than in the past. For example, "The Wizards of Perfil" and "The Constable of Abal" tread into full-blown fantasy territory while still maintaining Link's characteristic humor and wit. In "The Wizards of Perfil," a young girl goes to work for the eponymous wizards who hide away in their towers. Though the story is filled with magical doings and creatures, there is a pervasive sense of sarcasm, and the wizards are more objects of ridicule than respected magicians. "Everyone knows that wizards are pigheaded and come to bad ends" is the attitude of main character Halsa, who fetches water and seemingly pointless detritus for her never seen wizard.

On the other end of the genre spectrum, Link moves into science fiction territory with "The Surfer." Set on a futuristic Earth plagued by deadly flu outbreaks and a United States in which "all the good parts" have seceded, main character Dorn waits out a flu quarantine in Costa Rica by playing soccer and reading his father's old sci-fi novels. The mood evoked is almost that of Ann Patchett's Bel Canto: A group of unlike people are thrust together by outside forces for an unknown duration of time and must learn to adapt to a new way of life. This way of life includes hyper-technology—since Costa Rica is now the world's leading technological power—and seemingly backward cultists waiting for the return of god-like aliens that once appeared to their leader, the titular surfer. Link's world-building in this story is masterful. She tweaks existing technology to create an Earth that doesn't look so different from our own. Instead of Blackberries and iPods, people connect to the interwebs through "googlies," stay in touch with friends through "peeties," and read things off their "flexes."

However, Link doesn't entirely abandon her slipstream roots. The title story, "Pretty Monsters," features the magical realism and narrative experimentation fans of Link will find familiar. This story is woven from two separate narratives: the framing narrative of a girl named Lee and her friends hazing another friend from their private girl's school, and the "werewolf romance story" Lee reads as the story progresses that doesn't seem to have any werewolves or romance. Everything crashes together in the story's climactic ending, taking on elements of the fantastic and questioning the power and capacity of narrative.

The only thing disappointing about Pretty Monsters is that—even at 400 pages—it seems to end too soon. Quite a few of these stories have enough character, setting, and plot to carry a full novel, but each is clipped down to short story length. Here's hoping that Link's next endeavor is a full-length novel, and that she continues her unique narrative experiments well into the future.

(January, 2009)