Alix Harrow's Reviews > The Book of Love

truly--the kind of book you want to carve a hole into, so you can crawl in and make a home there. everything you love about Link's short fiction--the prose, the wonder, the proximity of the mythic and the mundane--is here, but grown huge. the back cover copy will tell you about the three teenagers who come back from the dead, but it's not about their resurrection so much as why they want to stay, and what they would leave behind: love. for each other, for friends and lovers, for books and music and good food. it's a story full of magic and fairy tales--a girl riding a bear through winter, a boy who becomes a fox, a wolf at the door--but what lingers for me is that ordinary, everyday love.

and alright, yes, it's 640 pages. is it """slow"""? sure. yeah. so is spring. so is a sunset. so is sex, if you're doing it right, and death, if you're lucky. some things are meant to be savored.