Third paragraph (it has no sections):
One time we were looking through kid’s t-shirts and we found a Muppets t-shirt that had belonged to Natalie in third grade. We knew it belonged to her, because it still had her name inside, where her mother had written it in permanent marker, when Natalie went to summer camp. Jake bought it back for her, because he was the only one who had money that weekend. He was the only one who had a job.
This was the subject of the very last of my first set of reviews of joint winners of the Hugos and Nebulas in the written fiction categories, published in January 2008 before I completely ran out of steam for that project. I wrote then:
I didn’t vote for it. Indeed, I put it last of the five nominees in the novelette category for the Hugos, where I had a vote as a Worldcon member; not because I didn’t like it, but because I liked the other stories on the ballot even more. The result was the closest of the four fiction categories, and voters found it difficult to choose for the lower places – second place decided by a single vote, joint win for third place. I don’t begrudge the result; all five nominees were very good, and I see that by the time the Nebulas came around I had changed my views and put it top (though three of the other four stories of course were different). Well, what was it Emerson said about consistency?
In fairness to myself, I think it’s a story that grows on you. On first reading I found it very entertaining but didn’t think it was especially deep; part of my increase in affection for it came about as a result of reading the whole Magic for Beginners collection of Kelly Link’s stories and developing a taste for her particular style of magical realism, urban fantasy, underlaid with darker tones. ‘The Faery Handbag’ is a story told by Genevieve, a young woman living near Boston whose grandmother came with her handbag from far-off Baldeziwurlekistan; the handbag may or may not contain a fierce canine guardian, Grandmother Zofia’s home village, Genevieve’s grandfather Rustam and her boyfriend Jake. But Genevieve has lost the handbag (this is not a spoiler as she tells us so on the second page). And that’s about it.
Part of my initial under-appreciation of the story may be my own background, as a native of Northern Ireland who has worked on the various different countries of Eastern Europe for the last eleven years. Perhaps from an American perspective, Baldeziwurlekistan is an amusing mix of those funny European countries over there, combining Celtic, Germanic, Slavic and classical elements in its mythology. For me, the lack of precision in the geography of Baldeziwurlekistan was a problem; I need to know where things are on the map, and Link’s story is about taking them off the map. I also found myself a bit frustrated by the narrator’s ambiguity about her own reliability, though other reviewers felt this was part of the story’s charm.
Having said that, I agree with everyone who loves Link’s descriptive writing here, from the account of looking through second-hand clothes in the first paragraph to the poignancy of Zofia’s death at the end; and the way we learn about the narrator’s frame of mind from the way she describes the events around her is tremendously subtle and effective. Indeed, as Abigail Nussbaum points out, it’s a bit more approachable than some of Link’s other stories, which may (again) be part of the reason I didn’t quite take to it immediately. But I’ve found it rather a difficult story to grasp sufficiently to write about, which is part of the reason this series of reviews has been on hiatus for seventeen months.
(And of course I never returned to that sequence, instead rebooting the joint Hugo and Nebula winners in chronological order starting in 2017.)
Rereading the story now, I found that it has grown on me again – in particular I loved the resonance between grandmother Zofia and grandfather Rustam, and present-day Genevieve and boyfriend Jake. And perhaps I have got more used to American humour in the last two decades, but I found the story funnier than my recollection. Definitely worth revisiting. “The Faery Handbag” is available on Link’s website for free.
“The Faery Handbag” won the Hugo for Best Novelette in Glasgow in 2005, the first ceremony that I attended. Best Novel went to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke; Best Novella to “The Concrete Jungle”, by Charles Stross; and Best Short Story to “Travels with My Cats”, by Mike Resnick.
These were the days of the crazy Nebula nominations system, so it won the 2005 Nebula for Best Novelette in 2006 (for a 2004 publication). Best Novel went to Camouflage, by Joe Haldeman; Best Novella to “Magic for Beginners”, also by Kelly Link; and Best Short Story to “I Live With You”, by Carol Emshwiller (who turned 85 the month before the ceremony).
Of the other Best Novelette finalists, “The People of Sand and Slag” by Paolo Bacigalupi was on the ballot with “The Faery Handbag” both times, and “The Voluntary State” by Christopher Rowe was on the same Hugo ballot and the previous year’s Nebula ballot.
Next in this sequence: “Two Hearts”, by Peter S. Beagle.
I don’t know where this illustration comes from, but it’s cute.
