Link tries to give the weirdness "a lived-in quality" that makes people comfortable. "You can get a lot of effect by making somebody feel at home, then knocking them a little off balance."
Link's stories, as well the press she runs with Grant, have made her a hero of the genre-bending slipstream movement.
The offices of Small Beer (the name comes from a low-alcohol ale popular in the Middle Ages) are in a refurbished New England mill that looks like something out of Blake, surrounded by trees that burst into violent color in the fall. Novelist Ursula K. Le Guin has called the imprint "a first-rate operation -- courage, chutzpah, high literary standards, handsome books -- everything you want from a publisher. They're one of the small houses that fill the huge gap left when the big houses started letting the accountants, instead of the editors, decide what to print."
"Pretty Monsters," with illustrations by Australian artist Shaun Tan, is the first of Link's books to be published outside the shoestring-budget, indie world of Small Beer. Link is on the same journey as some of her story's heroes.
"The thing that distinguishes a young-adult narrative," she said, "is a story of coming into a new world or a new sphere, experiencing things for the first time. So there's actually a lot of overlap between science fiction and fantasy and young adult, because frequently genre narratives, even mystery, are about people being thrust into a new world or taking on new responsibilities.
"And that can mirror the experience you have when you're a teenager, where the world is a strange place, and you don't know what the rules are."
--
scott.timberg@latimes.com
