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Magic for Beginners
 
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Magic for Beginners (Paperback)

by Kelly Link (Author), Shelley Jackson (Illustrator)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Harvest Books; Reprint edition (5 Sep 2006)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0156031876
  • ISBN-13: 978-0156031875
  • Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13.5 x 1.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 3,044,364 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review

Praise for Kelly Link: 'A new collection by Kelly Link -- and once more, for a little while, the world is worth saving.' Michael Chabon 'These stories will come alive, put on zoot suits and wrestle you to the ground.' Alice Sebold 'Dazzling, funny, scary and sexy, but only when they're not all of these at once. Kelly Link has strangeness, charm and spin to spare. Writers better than this don't happen.' Karen Joy Fowler 'The exact best and strangiest and funniest short story writer on earth.' Jonathan Lethem 'The most impressive writer of her generation.' Peter Straub 'Her stories have the vibrancy, the buzzing resonance and the oddly insistent quality of dreams.' New York Times 'Weird, funny, sad, scary, moving, hip, ingeniously executed and brilliantly written stuff.' Independent on Sunday 'Link's exquisite stories mix the aggravations and epiphanies of everyday life with the stuff that myths, dreams and nightmares are made of.' Salon 'A frighteningly original collection of stories from a frighteningly original voice.' SFX 'A superb collection!Link is the literary descendent of Jorge Luis Borges and Franz Kafka!It's complex; it's also continually surprising, compelling and strange!The first time I read "Magic for Beginners" I marvelled at the seamless integration of reality and otherness. With each subsequent reading I became more enamoured of the language, the voice, the glorious sentences themselves. Gobsmacking magnificence.' Guardian --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.


Independent on Sunday

'Weird, funny, sad, scary, moving, hip, ingeniously executed and
brilliantly written stuff.' --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Magic for Beginners
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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
5 star:
 (1)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.8 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars No Zombie contingency plan, 6 Mar 2007
This review is from: Magic for Beginners (Paperback)
I really enjoyed this book, it oozed ideas and some interesting counter intuitive phrasing, characterisation was excellent. I have never encountered a book which conveyed a sense of the unreality of myths, fairytales, witchcraft etc more effectively. The only thing that has prevented me from giving it five stars is somethiong to do with the typesetting, or at least thats what I think caused my problem. Perhaps the publisher has squeezed more words onto the page, or used a slightly unfamiliar font, I am not sure but whatever it was despite loving almost every sentence I found I made remarkably slow progress reading it. Make of this what you will, and remember I really enjoyed the book.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars One of my favourite books ever, 9 Feb 2009
By heather craggs (Bristol, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Magic for Beginners (Paperback)
Wow, what an amazing read. I loved that all the stories are linked not directly the the allusion to similar themes and subject matter is quite sophisticated. Exceptionally well written, genre defying stuff.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Well-written but empty, 2 Oct 2007
By C. Challenger (Bradford) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Magic for Beginners (Paperback)
I've just given up in the last story of this book. There is some beautiful writing here, but the stories fail to have dramatic impulse or tail off into disappointing endings. Typical is the short story which gives its name to the collection "Magic for Beginners". It starts off effectively with a group of young people obsessed with a television series mildly reminiscent of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but its resolution shows no logic. Too often, we are in a fantasy world and it doesn't matter what happens; which reminds me that I would be better off watching Buffy.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Book review
This is my second copy of Magic for Beginners. Strange and quirky book with very strong imagery which is both unsettling and funny - all at the same time. Read more
Published 4 months ago by BH Bright

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