Kelly Link's "Book of Love"
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/13/the-kissing-song/#wrack-and-roll
Kelly Link is one of science fiction's most important writers, a master of the short story to rank with the likes of Ted Chiang. For a decade, Kelly's friends have traded whispers that she was working on a novel – a giant novel – and the rumors were true and the novel is glorious and you will love it:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/book-of-love-9781804548455/
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/239722/the-book-of-love-by-kelly-link/
It's called The Book of Love and it's massive – 650 pages! It is glorious. It is tricky.
If you've read Link's short stories (which honestly, you must read), you know her signature move: a bone-dry witty delivery, used to spin tales of deceptive whimsy and quirkiness, disarming you with daffiness while she sets the hook and yanks. That's the unmistakeable, inimitable texture of a Kelly Link story: deft literary brushstrokes, painting a picture so charming and silly that you don't even notice when she cuts you without mercy.
Turns out that she can quite handily do this for hundreds of pages, and the effect only gets better when it's given space to unfold.
Hard to tell you about this one without spoilers! But I'll tell you this much. It's a story about three teenaged friends who return from death and find themselves in the music room at their high school, face to face with their mild-mannered music teacher, Mr Anabin. Anabin explains what's happened in frustratingly cryptic – and very emphatic – terms, but is interrupted when a sinister shape-shifting wolf enters the music room.
This is Bogomil, and whenever he speaks, Mr Anabin turns his back – and vice versa. Anabin and Bogomil appear to be rivals, and Bogomil may or may not have been the keeper of the land of the dead from which the three have escaped. There's also a forth, a tattered shade who's been dead so long they don't remember who they are or anything about themselves. Bogomil would like to take the four back to the deadlands, but Anabin proposes a contest and Bogomil agrees – but no one explains the contest or its rules (or even its stakes) to the four dead teenagers.
That's the wind up. The pitch that follows is flawless, a long and twisting mystery about friendship, love, queerness, rock-and-roll, stardom, parenthood, loyalty, lust and duty. There's a terrifying elder god of Lovecraftian proportions. There are ghosts upon ghosts. There are ancient grudges. There are sudden revelations that come from unexpected angles but are, in retrospect, perfectly set up.
More than anything, there are characters. It's impossible not to love Link's characters, despite (because of) their self-destructive choices and their impossible dilemmas. They are so sweet, but they are also by turns mean and spiteful and resentful, like the pinch of salt that transforms a caramel from inedible spun sugar into something that bites even as it delights.
These characters, so very likable, are often dead or at death's door, and that peril propels the story like an unstoppable locomotive. From the very start, it's clear that some of them can't survive to the end, and Link is merciless in making you root for all of them, even though this means rooting against them all. This, in turn, creates moments of toe-curling, sublime horror.
Link has built a complex machine with more moving parts than anyone has any business being able to keep track of. And yet, each of these parts meshes flawlessly with all the others. The book ends with such triumphant perfection that it lingers long after you put it down. I can't wait to read this one again.
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Join us at World of Eldritch County, a queer friendly and inclusive-of-all rp site, where you can explore Arkham through our many forums, take classes at Miskatonic, join a club (or a cult to an old god), and interact with other Arkhamites in our interactive chats!
Welcome to Essex County, Massachusetts, circa the early 1970s, where the cold winds bend the trees and strange eyes gaze out from the dark woods outside Arkham. You’ve just begun your tenure as a student at the prestigious but infamously unlucky Miskatonic University, a school known just as much for haunting tragedy as academic rigor. Things seem different here than they did in the main timeline…better in many ways, worse in others. How? You’ll have to explore. But be careful to not wander too closely to the shadowy woods or the coasts of Innsmouth.
You are not immune to horrors.
Welcome to World of Eldritch County, a 16+ text-based, literate horror rp, based on the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and his enduring legacy on genre fiction. At World of Eldritch County, we live for the quirky, weird, oddball, and terrifying in fiction. Do you love horror beyond just Lovecraft?
We have three class of characters on the creation screen:
➳ Townie: You were born in Arkham, and can feel its strange cosmic energy coursing through you. Where else would you go to school but Miskatonic?
➳ Prodigal: You left Arkham once, thinking you escaped your birthplace. But it called you back. It calls all of you back.
➳ Outsider: Whether through intellectual curiosity or unlucky stroke of fate, you were brought to Arkham from the Outside world…. Well. Enjoy your stay.
We are an inclusive rp site, open to all character types and all users (of the correct age). Come join one of our four Miskatonic dormitories! Are you courageous and clever? Join Dunwich! Driven by intellectual curiosity above all else? Join Innsmouth! Ambitious and confident? You’re perfect for Carcosa. Compassionate and loyal? Severn is definitely the dorm for you! Take our quiz after registering to find out which dorm will become your family, during your time at Miskatonic University.
Interested in diving a bit further into the student life? Miskatonic has plenty of interactive classes that offer homework, which allows you to earn points for rewards. Bring prestige to your dormitory by winning the dorm cup or yourself by earning the student cup!
More interested in the rp aspect? Wonderful! We have multiple forum locations for you to roleplay your time at Miskatonic, Arkham, and the other surrounding areas to your heart's content. Speaking of heart, you might want to hold onto that around here….
We have all this and more, including buyable and usable shop items, interactive notice board articles and contests, an active site blog, and multiple in-game chat rooms for short form rp! You can even fight against (or join) one of the dark cults to the old gods around town!
Tired of the normal life? Ready for something a bit more dark and wild? Join World of Eldritch County, and let us show you the cosmos!
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WINNIE-THE-CTHULHU.
Philistines may find this illustration risible, but in truth, A. A. Milne, the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh, was only 8 years older than H. P. Lovecraft, and had met him at least twice.
For in Milne's "Collected Epistles" volume IV (1923), he mentions "a rather queer fellow, Howard L., from New England, an archaist, a misanthrope. Writes strange stories" and in volume V (1926 - the same year "Winnie the Pooh" came out) "I've come to believe that Howard and I are really doing the same thing: we both write fables implicitly ridiculing Christianity."
Both enjoyed success in their writing in 1926; both attended soirées at The Institute for the Scientific Study of Human and Non-Human Phenomena's bureaux in New England.
Additionally, E.H. Shepard, illustrator of Winnie-the-Pooh, was not only an epistolary intimate of Lovecraft, but a secret cultist and member of the Golden Dawn.
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Is Cthulhu post (Written down) or pre-period (Ancient)?
Kraken-headed Tom-Turkey. Happy Fhtagngiving Day!
from H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society
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