A review by cinzia
Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link
3.0
This collection of nine short stories started out with a powerful degree of curiosity, only to completely untangle and delve into a chaotic and disjointed mess for the final three stories.
To be honest, the structure of the book itself was an ironic reflection of how each of the stories unfolded. They started out with originality with some exceptionally haunting imagery, but they either tried to do too much which diluted the power of the story, or they’re too allusive and confusing which makes the final pay-off not worth it.
Let’s take the tale called “The Surfer”. Clearly inspired by the Hendra virus in the 90s, this dystopian tale examines the world from the perspective of a young teenage boy living in a global pandemic (yah, spookily familiar), only this virus is fatal upon contraction. That plot and the characters in the story were engaging enough as they were, but then there was a whole added element of alien invasion and cult mentality which… just didn’t need to be there.
That becomes a running element of each of the stories: they could easily have been divided into two or three separate stories within themselves. But then, you have other stories like “The Specialist’s Hat” which was wonderfully atmospherically creepy, but then trailed off rapidly and ended poorly, rendering the tale totally vapid and jumbled.
It’s a shame overall. Because Links clearly has a brilliant imagination, but it tried to take on too much in either exceptionally short spaces or excessively long-winded ones. I’d like to see her writing in a few more years with some more refining, editing and structural effort because she has the imagination to create tangible scenes and characters but lacks the finesse to cement them in literature.
To be honest, the structure of the book itself was an ironic reflection of how each of the stories unfolded. They started out with originality with some exceptionally haunting imagery, but they either tried to do too much which diluted the power of the story, or they’re too allusive and confusing which makes the final pay-off not worth it.
Let’s take the tale called “The Surfer”. Clearly inspired by the Hendra virus in the 90s, this dystopian tale examines the world from the perspective of a young teenage boy living in a global pandemic (yah, spookily familiar), only this virus is fatal upon contraction. That plot and the characters in the story were engaging enough as they were, but then there was a whole added element of alien invasion and cult mentality which… just didn’t need to be there.
That becomes a running element of each of the stories: they could easily have been divided into two or three separate stories within themselves. But then, you have other stories like “The Specialist’s Hat” which was wonderfully atmospherically creepy, but then trailed off rapidly and ended poorly, rendering the tale totally vapid and jumbled.
It’s a shame overall. Because Links clearly has a brilliant imagination, but it tried to take on too much in either exceptionally short spaces or excessively long-winded ones. I’d like to see her writing in a few more years with some more refining, editing and structural effort because she has the imagination to create tangible scenes and characters but lacks the finesse to cement them in literature.