Last spring, when I reviewed the short fiction nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards, I wrote briefly about Kelly Link's novella "Magic for Beginners" (which won the former award, and scandalously lost the latter to a forgettable and humorless piece by Connie Willis). It was clear to me at the time that Link's story was one of the finest and most fascinating pieces of short fiction I'd read in quite some time, but it was with some trepidation that I said so in my Hugo and Nebula roundups because, as I wrote at the time, I didn't feel qualified to say why. Which is fairly typical of my reactions to a lot of Link's writing--I like most of her stuff, and I can see that her stories are sophisticated, with a hell of a lot going on under the surface. Most of the time, however, I really don't get what she's trying to say. A big part of my difficulties with Link's fiction has to do with the fact that I keep trying to read her as a fantasist, when ...