New review of Magic for Beginners

In her review of Link's Magic for Beginners in the January 2007 New York Review of Science Fiction, Ursula Pflug says the stories "are divided between those about pretty normal people to whom strange things happen, and out-and-out fairy tales." She writes that the fairy tales, including "The Faery Handbag" and "Catskin," display Link "out-grimming even the Brothers Grimm."

Pflug compares "The Great Divorce" to Tim Burton's movie Corpse Bride, also about a man who is married to a dead woman, and she cites the true-life case of Christelle Demichel, who in 2004, with the permission of the president of France, married her dead boyfriend, killed by a drunk driver. "I'm not sure who is stealing ideas from whom, here," Pflug writes.

Pflug also compares the multiple stories spun in "Lull" to the thousand and one tales of the legendary Persian queen Scheherazade. And of the title story, Pflug writes:

Very few authors writing for the adult market today care about youngsters just for themselves, finding them worthy enough to follow around and describe with wit and intelligence and compassion. Maybe Link has a little brother whom she watches, notebook in hand, as Gordon Strangler Mars, the writer dad in "Magic for Beginners," watches his son.