Philip Womack

Back from the beyond: The Book of Love, by Kelly Link, reviewed

Three adolescents reappear in their home town on the Massachusetts coast, having been presumed dead – which is closer to the truth than their families realise

Kelly Link. [Getty Images] 
issue 03 February 2024

Kelly Link’s short-story collections bewilder and delight with their sideways takes on fantasy tropes. People might turn into cats, but they do it while texting emojis (dancing lady, unicorn, happy face). In The Book of Love, Link’s debut novel, she revels in upholding and upturning the genre’s conventions. Mainlining Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and with a dose of recent teen Netflix fantasies such as Locke & Key, her setting is a small coastal town in Massachusetts to which three sarky adolescents have suddenly returned home – although not, as is generally supposed, from a short trip to Ireland, but from what they, alongside assorted supernatural beings, know to be Death itself.

Crossing back over Death’s threshold is the mark of a hero, and the trio exhibit miraculous abilities, can change the weather, transform into animals and even have sex in a magically created pavilion.

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