Magic for Beginners
Ratings27
Average rating3.4
Käsilaukkuun mahtuva kylä, paholainen ja cheerleader komerossa kertomassa tarinoita, suunnitelmia zombieiden varalle, avioero kuolleesta vaimosta — siinä muutamia aiheita tästä novellikokoelmasta. Uuskumman taituri Kelly Link sekoittaa tarinoissaan outoa ja tavallista taitavasti.
Kirjan niminovelli on ilmestynyt suomeksi Uuskummaa-kokoelmassa. Tarina jää tässäkin kirjassa yhtä hämmentävästi kesken. Novelli oli toisella lukemisella parempi, eikä lopetuskaan tuottanut samanlaista pettymystä. Kirjasta löytyy monta todella herkullista novellia, omia suosikkejani ovat Some Zombie Contingency Plans, The Faery Handbag ja Stone Animals, eikä joukossa ole varsinaisia epäonnistumisiakaan.
Kokoelmassa on kaksi todellista palkintorohmua: The Faery Handbag ja Magic for Beginners ovat molemmat Nebula– ja Locus-voittajia ja World Fantasy Award -finalisteja. Käsilaukun tarina voitti lisäksi Hugo-palkinnon. Kokoelmana kirja on voittanut Locuksen. Kirjan voi lukea ilmaiseksi Small Beer Pressin sivuilla, josta sen voi myös tilata useina eri laitoksina, mukaan lukien kalliina erikoispainoksena. Nykyaikaista markkinointia!
Outojen tarinoiden ystäville Magic for Beginners on oivallinen valinta. Tästä pitääkseen ei tarvitse olla fantasiafani, sillä useimmat tarinat ovat outoudestaan huolimatta pohjimmiltaan vankasti kiinni tavallisessa. (7.5.2010)
''There once was a man whose wife was dead. She was dead when he fell in love with her, and she was dead for the twelve years they lived together, during which time she bore him three children, all of them dead as well, and at the time of which I am speaking, the time during which her husband began to suspect that she was having an affair, she was still dead.'‘
''You should never burn down a house. You should never set a cat on fire. You should never watch and do nothing while a house is burning. You should never listen to a cat who says to do any of these things. You should listen to your mother when she tells you to come away from watching, to go to bed, to go to sleep. You should listen to your mother's revenge.
You should never poison a witch.'‘
And these are the only extracts that were worth highlighting. Apart from Stone Rabbits, Catskin, and The Great Divorce - stories of sadness, tragedy, bitterness and love that deserved to be part of a much better collection - the rest of the stories are an amalgam of surrealism and absurdism that serve no other purpose but to satisfy the ego of the writer. Confusion veering into paranoia just for the sake of it. There are much better short story collections that belong to the Magical Realism genre. This one was a frightful disappointment.
I have rarely been so torn about a book. I would definitely recommend it to particular people, but it was ultimately just not my style. The stories were just a little too surrealist for my taste. That being said, the stories had great atmosphere. Stone animals in particular was just unsettling enough, like a dream that scares you but you can't describe why.
Uhhh... you know that thing when you can recognize that something is well-done and still not like it that much?
That is how I felt about this book. I had to abandon a few of the stories halfway through because they were too scary. A lot of them were just like... really, beautifully, weird. Too weird for me, maybe? And I feel like my bar for weird is pretty high? But the weirdness was really well done.
I enjoyed this collection of short stories in which the odd and familiar live side by side. Some of my favorite stories were “Catskin” and “Magic for Beginners.”
‰ЫПThe ants have marched away, through the woods, and down into town, and they have built a nest on your yard, out of the bits of Time. And if you hold magnifying glass over their nest, to see the ants dance and burn, Time will catch fire and you will be sorry.‰Ыќ
