Get in Trouble

Publisher's Summary

She has been hailed by Michael Chabon as "the most darkly playful voice in American fiction" and by Neil Gaiman as "a national treasure." Now Kelly Link's eagerly awaited new collection - her first for adult listeners in a decade - proves indelibly that this bewitchingly original writer is among the finest we have.

Link has won an ardent following for her ability, with each new short story, to take listeners deeply into an unforgettable, brilliantly constructed fictional universe. The nine exquisite examples in this collection show her in full command of her formidable powers. In "The Summer People," a young girl in rural North Carolina serves as uneasy caretaker to the mysterious, never-quite-glimpsed visitors who inhabit the cottage behind her house. In "I Can See Right Through You," a middle-aged movie star makes a disturbing trip to the Florida swamp where his former on- and off-screen love interest is shooting a ghost-hunting reality show. In "The New Boyfriend," a suburban slumber party takes an unusual turn, and a teenage friendship is tested, when the spoiled birthday girl opens her big present: a life-size animated doll.

Hurricanes, astronauts, evil twins, bootleggers, Ouija boards, iguanas, The Wizard of Oz, superheroes, the Pyramids... These are just some of the talismans of an imagination as capacious and as full of wonder as that of any writer today. But as fantastical as these stories can be, they are always grounded by sly humor and an innate generosity of feeling for the frailty - and the hidden strengths - of human beings. In Get in Trouble, this one-of-a-kind talent expands the boundaries of what short fiction can do.

Read by a Full Cast:

• "The Summer People"... read by Grace Blewer
• "I Can See Right Through You"... read by Kirby Heyborne
• "Secret Identity"... read by Tara Sands
• "Valley of the Girls"... read by Robbie Daymond
• "Origin Story"... read by Rebecca Lowman
• "The Lesson"... read by Cassandra Campbell
• "The New Boyfriend"... read by Ish Klein
• "Two Houses" ... read by Susan Duerden
• "Light" ... read by Kirsten Potter

©2015 Kelly Link (P)2015 Random House

Critic Reviews

"Kelly Link is the author whose books I would take to the proverbial desert island, because her books are dream oases. Each one of these 'short stories' feels infinitely vast once you are inside it, like the enchanted castles and bottomless wells in fairy tales. Link's work is always darkly funny, sexy, frightening, and truly weird - she can dismantle and remake the world in a paragraph. Since Magic for Beginners, I've been pacing the docks, waiting for more Kelly Link. Get in Trouble offers further proof that she belongs on every reader's bookshelf." (Karen Russell)

"Link's stories are always a treat, and Get in Trouble contains some of her best writing yet. Richly imagined, intellectually teasing: These are not so much small fictions as windows onto entire worlds. This is a brilliant, giddying read." (Sarah Waters)

Very entertaining

Loved these short stories. Dark, whimsical and very entertaining. Definitely will listen again in the future. Only down side is- I wish that all of these stories where full novels.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Great stories, wildly uneven narrator quality

What did you love best about Get in Trouble?

The stories are imaginative, clever, and captivating.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Immy in The New Boyfriend. Relatable, believable as a teenage girl.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of the narrators?

Complicated question. A few of the narrators were terrific. Some were fine. Some were really, really terrible. I only want to replace the terrible ones.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Clever, Surreal, Stylized

The stories are clever and at times hilarious, especially if you imagine sentences taken out of context. The multiple narrators (one for each story) have very distinctive voices, which in some but not all cases serve the story well. If you like stylized stories and narration with a tilt to the surreal, you'll enjoy the book, as I did.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Get in Trouble - Confusing Fictional Narratives

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Get in Trouble was not the best use of my Audible credit... here is why:

What was most disappointing about Kelly Link’s story?

Some of the short stories seemed to pick up out of no where and end in the middle of something,never really getting to a solid point. Because I listened to rather than read the stories, I often got lost or confused in the narratives (explained below) and was not entirely sure what was going on. There were a couple of stories that dealt with some very interesting topics--like the one with the drowned baby-- and some which had some humor--like the vampire/dentist convention one. Overall, the stories seemed to have potential, but they were introduced and concluded too quickly, with some random and strange topics I did not find completely relatable.

What about the narrators’s performance did you like?

There were multiple narrators, some of them seemed a little too monotone in their narration (which caused me to lose focus and ended up in my getting lost in the story) while other seemed to give the story appropriate dimension.

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

Dont waste your time

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

Stories were borderline on grabbing my attention, building up to absolutely nothing. Endings were horrible, if you could even decipher when a story ended.

3 of 8 people found this review helpful