Magic for Beginners

Magic for Beginners, by Kelly Link (2005, Small Beer Press), is a collection of short stories which mainly fall into the slipstream/magical realism category, where everything is 80% our world and 20% strange dreamlike happenings which still have a strange logic behind them. The stories in this ranged from fantastic - the titular Magic for Beginners, about a group of teenagers brought together for love of an odd fantasy TV show, was beautiful, and The Faery Handbag and Stone Animals were also very strong - to "yeah, OK" (the cannon thing...?) - overall, I was left with a strong positive impression.