San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
A supernatural story about love in all its forms bewitches
Three teens have come back from the dead, but they’ve got no idea how they pulled it off. Or how they died. To make matters weirder, none of their families seem aware they were missing just days ago. And soon, the miffed guardians of the afterlife show up to collect the souls that skipped bail.
Readers familiar with Kelly Link’s work won’t be surprised by this unsettling brew of the surreal and the normal. Her five short story collections have earned her a reputation as a master of the everyday uncanny — and literary honors ranging from a Pulitzer nomination to a MacArthur Fellowship genius grant.
“The Book of Love,” Link’s hotly anticipated first novel, delivers plenty of that trademark dream logic while also making full use of the longer form to simmer characters, relationships and setting to the point of profound tenderness.
The result is Lovesend: a gossipy small town that’s a delight to explore — and home to an engaging mystery whose stakes grow only graver as the book goes on. The plotting is slower in this novel than in Link’s short fiction; it will doubtless be too slow for some. But the rewards are rich for those who stick with it.
As it turns out, our three heroes’ little undying stunt has displeased a goddess whose taste in fashion is almost as flashy as her taste in cruelty. When we first meet Malo Mogge, she’s wearing “a sleeveless yellow suede minidress and a necklace spelling out I’M WITH STUPID in cursive purple rhinestone letters … (and) pointy lilac boots (that) were definitely alligator.” She
THE BOOK OF LOVE p.m. Feb. 27. Free. 1231 Ninth Ave., San Francisco. www.greenapplebooks.com promptly turns two bystanders into tigers on a whim.
To save their town (and, probably, the whole world) from this hellion’s casual wrath, the teens must learn to
7 wield magic themselves — without letting their growing powers turn them into Malo Mogge-ish megalomaniacs.
Readers allergic to the labels
“fantasy” or “young adult” might have started sniffling a few paragraphs ago. But you’d be wrong to assume that a book about enchanted adolescents can only be enjoyed by the young. “Book of Love’s” soundings of relationships, all the ways they fail us and heal us, are deep enough to reward any fan of character-driven stories. Link just happens to choose the transitional ordeals of high school, and the extremity of supernatural threats, as her testing grounds for the limits and potentials of love.
Through shifting perspectives, “Book of Love” introduces an intriguing cast of characters