The Book of Love

The Book of Susannah


A girl wakes up in her sister s bed. Laura? she says. No one answers.

Oh, she shouldn t be here. The one who should be here isn t.

The girl s name is Susannah. She is too tall, lamentably tall, and she has bad dreams. Shouldn t her dreams be comforting? Restorative? Shouldn t she see the ones she longs with all her heart to see? But in dreams, too, they are inexplicably missing.

The sheets are half off the bed as if someone has been yanking them. It isn t morning yet. It s the middle of the night. Everything is in the wrong place, except it isn t. Her mother, Ruth, isn t home yet. All those NICU babies with their complicated medical needs, their rashy bottoms and feeding tubes, suffused in ultraviolet light, parents slumped in blistered Naugahyde recliners, nurses murmuring in corners about the bid to unionize, about husbands and television shows and their own children. Do they fall silent when Susannah s mother comes close?

I m tired of this, the girl says to the moon in the window, because no one else is there to talk to. Not knowing. Being in the dark. Being alone in the dark. Don t you ever get tired of it?

The moon is full. Isn t this proof of something? That things can disappear and then come back again? Eleven months since whatever happened happened, and Susannah knows Laura isn t coming back. If she did come back, she d say, What the hell are you doing in my bed, Susannah? Oh my God.

Susannah can almost hear her say it. She gets up and makes the bed the way Laura would, because Laura isn t here to do the things that Laura ought to do. To keep Susannah from doing the things Susannah shouldn t do. All of Laura s stuffed animals are on the floor. The sky-blue owl and the pangolin in its gingham dress. Everyone loved Laura best. Everyone misses Laura. The threadbare dog with the sewn-up place where the button eye should be has a secret name. Laura would never tell Susannah what she called it. Its name

Kelly Link is the author of White Cat, Black Dog; Get in Trouble, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction; Magic for Beginners; Stranger Things Happen; and Pretty Monsters. Her short stories have been published in The Best American Short Stories and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. She is a MacArthur "Genius" fellow and has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the co-founder of Small Beer Press and co-edits the occasional zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. She is also the co-owner of Book Moon, an independent bookstore in Easthampton, Massachusetts.

The Book of Love is an incredible achievement a novel whose people and places feel so true to life that the magic that shimmers through the pages like grown-up fairy dust seems not just real but unquestionable. Cassandra Clare, author of Sword Catcher

By turns playful and harrowing, surreal and sagacious, replete with gods and other monsters, The Book of Love is an astonishing, gorgeous novel written with Link s unique wit, warmth and ability to get under your skin. Holly Black, author of Book of Night
 
A supernatural story about love in all its guises bewitches. . . . The places of this novel are both glitteringly strange and so fully realized that one feels one might visit them tomorrow. San Francisco Chronicle

The Book of Love does justice to its name. Its composition, its copiousness, suggests that love, in the end, contains all that frustration, rage, vulnerability, loss and grief are love s constituent parts, bound by and into it. The New York Times Book Review

[Link's]. . . . writing sparkles with wit and colour, and there is much camp weirdness and shimmering grandeur. The Spectator (UK)

The wonders of Hollywood special effects feel like garish imitations next to Link s sorcery. The Washington Post

. . . if you are, possibly, a cynic looking for something to give you some renewed faith in love/friendship/literature in this month of cold and candy hearts, and/or find yourself wishing for a little more magic in your life, this is the novel for you. It s even red. Lit Hub

A dizzying dream ride you will never forget. Leigh Bardugo, author of Ninth House

Haunting, immersive, and at times surpassingly beautiful. Locus

This is one of those books that cuts your life in two: before you read it, and after. Alix E. Harrow, author of Starling House

A giant, glorious novel about friendship, love, queerness, rock-and-roll,