The Book of Love: A Novel

by Kelly Link

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Everything you're hearing and reading about this novel is true: it's a deeply satisfying read that combines fantastical elements, varieties of love and a supernatural bargain, all set in a picturesque seaside town.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In the acclaimed first novel from short story virtuoso and Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link, three teenagers become pawns in a supernatural power struggle.

“A dreamlike, profoundly beautiful novel [that] pushes our understanding of what a fantasy novel can be.”—Amal El-Mohtar, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

“Imagine a ring of David Mitchell and Stephen King books dancing around a fire until something new, brave, and wonderful rose up from the flames.”—Isaac Fitzgerald, Today

ONE OF PUBLISHER WEEKLY’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE

The Book of Love showcases Kelly Link at the height of her powers, channeling potent magic and attuned to all varieties of love—from friendship to romance to abiding family ties—with her trademark compassion, wit, and literary derring-do. Readers will find joy (and a little terror) and an affirmation that love goes on, even when we cannot.

Late one night, Laura, Daniel, and Mo find themselves beneath the fluorescent lights of a high school classroom, almost a year after disappearing from their hometown, the small seaside community of Lovesend, Massachusetts, having long been presumed dead. Which, in fact, they are.

With them in the room is their previously unremarkable high school music teacher, who seems to know something about their disappearance—and what has brought them back again. Desperate to reclaim their lives, the three agree to the terms of the bargain their music teacher proposes. They will be given a series of magical tasks; while they undertake them, they may return to their families and friends, but they can tell no one where they’ve been. In the end, there will be winners and there will be losers.

But their resurrection has attracted the notice of other supernatural figures, all with their own agendas. As Laura, Daniel, and Mo grapple with the pieces of the lives they left behind, and Laura’s sister, Susannah, attempts to reconcile what she remembers with what she fears, these mysterious others begin to arrive, engulfing their community in danger and chaos, and it becomes imperative that the teens solve the mystery of their deaths to avert a looming disaster.

Welcome to Kelly Link’s incomparable Lovesend, where you’ll encounter love and loss, laughter and dread, magic and karaoke, and some really good pizza.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812996586
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/13/2024
Pages:	640
Sales rank:	10,067
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

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.

Read an Excerpt

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 was probably something stupid, though. No one ever keeps a good secret. And now no one knows except for the dog.

Susannah picks up Laura’s things and puts them down again. Laura isn’t here to tell her not to. So she conjures Laura up in her head. Don’t worry, Laura. It’s easy to put little things back where they belong. The little circles and marks in the dust on the shelves show where each right place is. If Susannah puts each of Laura’s things back exactly where it ought to be, then everything will go back to the way it should be.

The china shepherdess that was their grandmother’s. (Susannah has a silver ring. Missing all but one of its seed pearls.) Pictures of Laura and Susannah and their mother. Pictures of Laura and Susannah and Daniel on stage. Laura’s romance novels, alphabetically arranged. Her favorite writer was Caitlynn Hightower. The covers of the romance novels, meant to indicate that the attractive people on them will eventually have sex. Fall inextricably in love, which in these books neither lessens nor changes but instead hardens, trapping those who inhabit it as amber preserves the insect. Wistful symphonic music (“Lara’s Theme.” Céline Dion. That kind of thing.) will begin to swell appropriately while these attractive and imaginary people f***. Perhaps on a horse! Behind a tapestry. On a boat. On a hill. In the past. Hail fellow kismet. Everything in the right place. Very knock-knock joke. Knock knock. Who’s there? Does it matter? You’re a person with (a pirate ship) (a dreadful secret) (a good fortune) and I’m a person with (a fortress) (a walled garden) (a stone) for a heart so let’s have sex. Let’s fall in love. Sure. Why not.

There are so many novels about falling in love and so few about finding a really good and rewarding job. Not that Susannah has read a book in a long time. Books are for kids who go to college. Her mother keeps leaving community college brochures on the kitchen counter. Susannah keeps throwing them away.

Little lines of dust where the spines meet the shelf.

Things that Laura liked: Romance novels. Milk Duds. Susannah sometimes. Music.

Laura could make her guitar talk. The guitar saying the things that Laura felt. I’m so happy. Are you happy? I’m happy. Knock knock. Go away, Susannah. I want to go to sleep. I’m sleepy. Are you happy? I’m so afraid. I’m so sad. I’m so sad.

Laura’s bed, Laura’s closet, Laura’s clothes in drawers and behind the closet door. Susannah can borrow them now and Laura won’t complain. Knock knock. Who’s there? Dear sister, it is I. Your sister. I am here and you are not. Can I borrow your red sweater? Okay. Sure.

Why not.

The jadeite mug on the windowsill holds guitar picks and Chinese fortunes. (You are beautiful and mysterious to all who encounter you.) (Do not fear change.) (Every door will be open to you.) Platitudes and lies.

Susannah stands at Laura’s window. Across the lawn is Daniel’s house, the yellow rectangle of Daniel’s window, a light on in Daniel’s room. Does his mother sit there when she can’t sleep?

Susannah picks up her sister’s old Harmony Sovereign Marveltone acoustic and runs her hand down the neck. “Laura?” Susannah says. “Come back. You should come back or else I’ll do something terrible. I need you to come back.”

She waits for an answer. Gets none. Actually, this is typical of Laura, who believed in the silent treatment. So, Susannah thinks, let’s be typical. She’s tried so hard to be good the last few months. Has anyone even noticed? If Daniel were here, he would have noticed. Mo would have noticed even if he didn’t say anything. She’s pretty f***ing sure Laura would have noticed.

If Daniel were here, he would help her figure out how to live without Laura. If Laura were here, she and Susannah could figure out together how to live without Daniel. But it’s only Susannah. It will only ever be Susannah again, which means that Susannah can’t be Susannah. She doesn’t know how.

Laura’s first guitar was the Harmony. Its previous owner was careless and left it near a radiator one night. This was their father: someone else who isn’t here. If the guitar had still had any value, he’d have taken it with him when he left. Right? Susannah lifts the Harmony over her head and brings it down hard on the corner of Laura’s desk. When this isn’t hard enough, she brings it down again and again until she has smashed what she can into pieces. With the last blow, a section of the neck splits away and ricochets off the window, and there goes the jadeite mug, over onto the desk. Picks spill everywhere, and the handle cracks right off at the lip. Well, that’s a mess. When Susannah crosses the carpet to pick up the mug, she feels something in her heel as if she’s stepped on something sharp. She sits down on Laura’s bed and examines her foot. Yes, there it is, a splinter. She’ll leave it there for now. A reminder of her sins.

What does she feel? The small hurt where a splinter sits. Nothing to cry over, and so she won’t cry.

Susannah gets down on her hands and knees and gathers up all the pieces of the guitar and puts them into Laura’s closet. She puts the mug back on the windowsill, too, turned so that the crack in the lip where the handle ought to be is hidden.

What has she accomplished? Well, maybe wherever she is, Laura felt a psychic twinge of loss. Next time, Susannah thinks, I’m donating all of your Caitlynn Hightower romance novels to Goodwill. I’m going to throw away your Bed Head shampoo and the expensive face stuff that smells like rotten ginger ale even though you always pretended you liked it. I’m going to accept the fact you’re gone forever. F*** you for being dead or whatever it is that happened. Be a secret. See if I care.

Susannah could go downstairs and turn on the TV. She could tear the pangolin to pieces. Smash the shepherdess. She could go into the bathroom and run water over the tender place where the splinter went in. But instead she lies down again on Laura’s bed and pulls the comforter over her head. She’ll wake up when her mother gets home; she has to wake up before Ruth gets home because what if Ruth opens the door to Laura’s room and thinks that Laura is back? What if she opens Susannah’s door and thinks Susannah is gone?

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/18/2023

Pulitzer finalist Link (White Cat, Black Dog) makes a dazzling full-length debut that proves her gloriously idiosyncratic style shines just as brightly at scale. A year after high schoolers Laura, Daniel, and Mo died, they’re brought back to life (alongside one other, much older ghost) by their band teacher, Mr. Anabin, the unlikely possessor of powerful magic. He and his counterpart, Bogomil, who held the quartet captive in the dark realm of death, decide to play a game. The winners will stay alive; the losers will die once more. To succeed, the teens must learn magic and remember the murky circumstances of their own deaths, all while navigating fraught relationships with loved ones, especially Laura’s temperamental sister, Susannah. For much of the plot, the protagonists are batted about by supernatural forces far larger than themselves, including Anabin, Bogomil, and the glamorous, enigmatic Mallo Mogge. In less capable hands, the amount of uncertainty both characters and readers must endure before answers are revealed might grow frustrating, but Link makes the slow trickle of information both tense and tantalizing. Striking visuals and nimble characterization are delivered with poetry, wry humor, and a remarkable clarity of detail. (Susannah “was a new bruise. The world was always pressing on her”; Laura “was practically a gothic piñata stuffed with bone shards, dead rabbits, secrets so secret not even she understood them.”) Link dexterously somersaults between tonal registers—from playfully whimsical (love and magic are both explained via a comparison to asparagus) to hair-raising and uncanny (a cat goes from grooming itself to devouring itself whole)—without ever missing a step. This is a masterpiece. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

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

“Sublime . . . In some ways The Book of Love feels Dickensian, but it also shares DNA with Harry Potter and TV series like Stranger Things. . . . [The characters’] boldness and exhilaration are infectious. For a minute there, I even thought I could fly.”—The Boston Globe

“[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, stardom, parenthood, loyalty, lust and duty.”—Cory Doctorow, author of The Lost Cause

“The Book of Love is a luxurious, bewitching novel of exceptional beauty and power.”—Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House

“Pure enchantment—a tale of love, death, magic and teenagers being teenagers, rich with fairy strangeness and told in sentences like jewels strung on a chain.”—Zen Cho, author of Black Water Sister

“Pulitzer finalist Link makes a dazzling full-length debut that proves her gloriously idiosyncratic style shines just as brightly at scale. . . . This is a masterpiece.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A moving and deft exploration of the many ways ‘love goes on even when we cannot.’”—Booklist (starred review)

“An absolute feast of a story, ushering the reader along a path that is always sublime, often hilarious, and at every single point rammed full of heart and truth.”—Melinda Salisbury, author of Her Dark Wings

From the Publisher

12/01/2023

In a small-town high school classroom in the middle of the night, the spirits of three dead students and one interloper have escaped death's realm by methods as mysterious as the cause of their deaths. They are confronted by two equally mysterious beings and a puzzle. Two of them will live, two of them will die, but as they're solving all the riddles, they may reunite with their families. The town has become ground zero for big magic, a place where good and evil, death and chaos, music, and especially love, wreak havoc as the teenagers attempt to unravel the mystery before it unravels them and all they love. Link (White Cat, Black Dog) rewards the patient reader with a surprisingly deep story seen through the myriad perspectives of a small town in the midst of chaos, where every person's life has been skewed by the magic spiraling out around them. VERDICT Lovers of magical coming-of-age stories will find the protagonists' journeys compelling, while anyone who believes that love is the greatest magic of all will find the redemptive power of love (of all types) imbued in every single page.—Marlene Harris

Library Journal

January LaVoy performs this epic story of three teenagers who are brought back from the dead just long enough to compete in a mysterious game to see who gets to continue to live. In this debut novel by Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link, characters Laura, Daniel, and Mo find themselves back in Lovesend, Massachusetts, one year after they died. Their families have no memory of what happened. LaVoy's narration evokes the dreamlike quality of the novel as two supernatural entities compete against each other, using the teenagers' lives for their own ends. LaVoy captures whimsy and darkness in equal measure, spinning this fairytale-like story into an engrossing audiobook. K.D.W. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

MARCH 2024 - AudioFile

2023-11-04
A master of short fantasy offers her long-anticipated first novel.

Link has a genius for combining the mundane with the uncanny, diving into the dark currents where dreams grow and bringing up magic-encrusted jetsam, pearlescent ideas that coil and shock. The story takes place in a coastal New England town with the beautifully ambiguous, typically Link name of Lovesend. (Love’s end? Love send?) There, four teenagers—sisters Susannah and Laura, their bandmate Daniel, and Susannah’s friend Mo—are caught up in a struggle with deities who control access to death. As the book opens, Laura, Daniel, and Mo have been dead for months; in her grief, Susannah smashes her sister’s guitar. Soon, the teens, along with a mysterious companion, return from the dead, reanimated by their high school music teacher, Mr. Anabin. Another supernatural person, Bogomil, appears, taking various human and animal forms (a wolf, a rabbit). He writes a message on the music classroom blackboard with his fingernail: “2 RETURN 2 REMAIN.” Mr. Anabin gives the revenants a series of tasks, which they believe will allow two of them to stay alive while the other two, they presume, will die again. As they perform the tasks, readers get to know their families and personal struggles: Laura and Susannah’s father left the family when they were little, and the two contend with sibling rivalry and family roles (Laura’s the good girl, Susannah’s the rebel); Daniel, who has a compulsion to be liked, is a loving, caretaking big brother to a gaggle of mixed-race siblings; Mo, a gay orphan and one of the few Black kids in town, has lost his beloved grandmother while he was dead. Meanwhile, increasingly dramatic magical events transform their hometown—the weather goes hot and cold, carousel horses turn into wolves, the goddess of the moon erects a temple in the middle of the bay—as the characters rush endlessly back and forth, arriving at last at an almost mechanically tidy ending. Although all the fabulous Link elements are here, at more than 600 pages, the story is unwieldy and overexplained.

This book has many enchantments and moving moments, but it would have been better, and more magical, if it were shorter.

Kirkus Reviews