Review: The Book of Love, by Kelly Link
by Rich Horton
Since then she has published close to 50 short stories, most included in her six collections (and one slim chapbook.) She has also edited several anthologies and co-edits the magnificent small 'zine Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet with her husband Gavin Grant. Kelly and Gavin also have a bookstore, Book Moon, in Easthampton, MA (very close to my Dad's hometown of Hadley, close enough that last year before Readercon I drove out to west central Massachusetts to see my Dad's old house (and the school my grandmother taught at) and then visited Book Moon.) She has won the Tiptree/Otherwise Award, three Nebulas, a Hugo, a couple of World Fantasy Awards, a Sturgeon, a Stoker. And she has gained plenty of respect outside the genre as well, with numerous placements on "Book of the Year" lists, a Shirley Jackson Award, and being named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
As for myself, I have a long list of Kelly Link stories I adore. I reprinted "The Summer People", "Secret Identity", "The Game of Smash and Recovery" and "The Girl Who did not Know Fear" in my Best of the Year volume. Other favorites include "Magic for Beginners", "Lull", "Light", "The White Road", "The Faery Handbag", "The Specialist's Hat", and "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose". So I was certainly anticipating The Book of Love.
So what is it like? It's a big novel that takes place over a period of less than a week, in December of 2014 in the town of Lovesend, MA. There are four central characters, about as many nearly central characters, and many more who get brief POV sections. It's a fantasy, involving a Moon goddess, some nearly immortal characters, people coming back from the dead, and lots and lots of magic. It's also a pretty naturalistic story, about life in a semi-gentrified, semi-tourist town, with a noticeable focus on race, as one of the main characters is the grandson of a bestselling romance novelist who happens to be Black (but who only wrote one novel with a Black heroine.) Aspects of the novel reminded me of Elizabeth Hand's Waking the Moon, and as one of the main families in this novel is named Hand, I wondered if that might be a little nod to Hand's book. I should add that while there are some points of resemblance, the two novels are on the whole very different.
The novel opens with Susannah Hand still mourning the death of her sister Laura, who had disappeared about a year before along with their neighbor Daniel Knowe (who was also Susannah's off-and-on boyfriend) and Mohammed Gortch, another friend of Susannah's. Susannah has graduated from high school but is kind of drifting. Laura and Mohammed were a year younger than Susannah and Daniel. Susannah, Daniel, and Laura were in a band called Our Two Hands Knowe You, while Mohammed is obsessed with music but very private about it.
Then, mysteriously, Laura, Daniel, and Mohammed escape whatever realm they went to when they died. And their music teacher, Mr. Anabin, makes bodies for them and sends them home, having altered the memories of everyone in Lovesend so that they are thought to have returned from a semester studying in Ireland. But there is a catch -- Mr. Anabin and a sinister shapeshifting creature named Bogomil are rivals of some sort, and they agree that the three returnees, plus a strange fourth, a boy named Bowie, must complete some magical tasks, after which, "Two stay, two return".
After which, there is a sort of whirlwind series of days -- just days -- in which the four returnees variously struggle with their increasing magical abilities (or resist them, in Daniel's case), and reintegrate themselves with their families: Laura with her sister and their mother and an unexpected visit from their father who left long ago; Daniel with his horde of step-siblings plus his mother and stepfather; Mohammed with -- well, the shocking realization that his grandmother (the romance writer) died in his absence (his mother was long dead) and all he has is his grandmother's assistant, Jenny Ping; and Bowie -- well, Bowie, who had died centuries before, has mainly to realize his own identity. Daniel and Susannah reignite their relationship, Mohammed breaks off with his occasional hookup before falling in love with a strange visitor named Thomas; Laura finally takes the chance to encounter her long time crush Rosamel; and Bowie -- well, things are different for Bowie.
All along there are occasional spooky encounters with Mr. Anabin and Bogomil, some definite indications of magic, and then the realization that there is a new more powerful entity in Lovesend, a goddess named Mala Mogge, whose servants are Anabin and Bogomil -- and Mohammed's new boyfriend Thomas. Mala Mogge is a tacky individual, evil incarnate in ugly costumes and shabby temples, and she is looking for her lost key -- which she is convinced one of the returnees has. And that's what the novel turns on -- what is this key? Where is it? And should whoever has it cooperate with someone as vile as Mala Mogge?
The novel is a bit of a slow burn. It's never not interesting, but it takes a while to cohere -- I think for good artistic reasons, but readers do need to stick with it. We do get an extended look at life in Lovesend -- the coffee shop, the Cliff Hangar bar, the school, Little Moon Bay. And we learn a lot about not just the main characters, but people like Mohammed's grandmother Maryanne, who writes as "Caitlyn Hightower"; and Rosamel Walker, the sassy Black Lesbian; and her friends Natalie and Theo, whose parents own Thai Super Delight; and Daniel's little sister Carousel; and the statues Maryanne Gortch bought, of Black women whose achievements are in danger of being forgotten; and of course the back history of Bowie, and Thomas, and a girl named Avelot.
The novel comes to a climax after much chaos, some honest tragedy, some triumph, and some compromise. Towards the end the slow burn ignites, and there are some truly wrenching passages. Having said that, the resolution felt just slightly flat -- perhaps I simply wanted too much. It's an honest conclusion, to be sure -- it doesn't cheat. But it doesn't quite astonish. Still -- it's a novel above love -- and love's end -- and love send -- and maybe love zen! -- and successfully so. It's also about doors, and revenge, and magic, and death, and family. It's a very good novel, not quite a great novel, but a wonderful first novel.
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