The Best Novel of 2024
comes out in 2 weeks and I'm going to tell you all about it
Okay, first of all, this is my attempt at writing a catchy headline. Did it work? Was it catchy? Second of all, how do I know, I certainly haven’t read every book coming out in 2024, and nor do I intend to. What can I tell you, though, is that I am nearly finished with a book that I love so enormously that I literally can’t wait to tell people about it. I have been waiting for Kelly Link’s novel for the last twenty-two years, by my count, so why should I wait any longer to shout about how fucking great it is?
Kelly, if you don’t want to have to call the stalker police, just stop reading now. Everyone else, proceed.
In 2002, I went with my parents to see our friends’ band Future Bible Heroes play at the Mercury Lounge, and Kelly opened. My father was friends with Kelly, and she was friends with the band, and I loved the band, and Kelly read her backwards cheerleader story, and I can remember thinking, how is possible for someone to read a short story in a rock club and have every single person hang on every word? The room hummed. I saw Kelly read that story—Lull, it’s in her first book, Magic for Beginners—at least two more times, and every time, it was like strapping into a roller coaster. When I think about that time in my life, it feels magic too—do you have periods like that in your life, where you just think, oh my god, I made so many decisions in that short period of time that affected the rest of my life? That was me in 2002 and 2003, fresh out of college. I met the boy I would marry. I was getting to know the collection of musicians that would become an extension of my family for the rest of my life. I fell in love with Kelly Link. I was trying to be a novelist and just so PUMPED for my life to really begin.
This morning I listened to Wesley Morris on Talk Easy (I only discovered the podcast this year, and, side note, I think Sam Fragoso is a better interviewer than Terry Gross) and as always, he made me think. He made me think about thinking! Wesley is one of my favorite critics, one of my favorite brains, and I could listen to him talk about anything for hours. Ostensibly, they were talking about the Oscars, but really they were talking about movies, and creativity, and aging, and it made me think about Kelly, and watching someone create and create and create over a long span of time. I won’t say she’s in her prime now, whatever that is, because she has never been anything short of extraordinary and utterly singular, but it is true that this is her first novel, and it’s a fucking doorstopper, and part of my absolute thrill at reading this new book is just she fucking did it. She got from the backwards cheerleader to this 700 page novel, and everything she’s done in between has led her here.
The novel is called The Book of Love, and it’s about teenagers who come back from the dead. It’s about magic and grief and a witchy little town. The chapters are short enough that you can always tell yourself, oh, just one more, just one more. It is sharp and human and funny about friendship and love and families, and every so often, Kelly does a backflip in the middle of the page. Sometimes she does six. I’ve been having weird dreams since I started reading, and part of me thinks that it’s because everything in the book is real. “The Book of Love” is also the name of a song by my friend Stephin, whose band Kelly opened up for twenty-two years ago. You see what I mean?
It’s also, of course, making me think so much about my dad. He would have been so proud of Kelly’s book—Big Pete loved a doorstopper, and he loved Kelly. It’s impossible to read a book about bringing people back from the dead and not think about your own dead. Could I conjure him back if I knew the right words, had the right flick of a wrist? This is where I have the lucky coin, the magic spell, the ghost in my pocket that I can pluck out of the air. Yesterday I opened one of my dad’s books for the first time since he died, and I was about to read something outloud to my family—something from his author’s note, not even from the text itself, because it was so hilarious and so perfectly in his voice—and I realized I couldn’t, because I was crying. That is the magic of books, of someone who can use words to create entire worlds and play and have fun and lighten their own darkness for a little while. What a gift, to leave breadcrumbs for everyone who loved you, breadcrumbs big enough to live inside. Now that sounds like a story Kelly Link could tell.
If you live in Brooklyn, you should come see Kelly at Books Are Magic on February 13th. I will be in Cincinnati for a booksellers conference, but you can believe that in spirit, I will be sitting in the front row, cheering.
If you live somewhere else, see if Kelly is coming to your town!
My Favorite Kelly Link Stories in Each of Her Books:
Stranger Things Happen— “Girl Detective”
Magic For Beginners—oh my god, I just looked at the table of contents and I literally can’t choose, I would rather die. I already mentioned “Lull,” so let’s go “Stone Animals” or “The Faery Handbag,” because those are the ones I think about the most in my daily life. (You’ll see.) (Try reading “Stone Animals” and then ever looking at a statue of a rabbit for the rest of your life.)
Get in Trouble—”The New Boyfriend.” Greta Gerwig, do this one next!
Pretty Monsters—"Monster”.
White Cat, Black Dog—”Skinder’s Veil” DANG DANG DANG I love this story.
Looking through all of her books this morning, I am struck by the Kellyverse, the repeating motifs and obsessions, the magic, the dead people, the teenage girls. It reminded me a little bit of the pleasure of reading Kevin Wilson’s books, where you understand so precisely whose brain you are inside, and where you recognize some of the surroundings, and say hello to the shadows of other stories that you remember. It’s like going to the Ring Cycle at the Met (I have never done this) and hearing a few notes of someone’s theme in a new scene, and you think, oh, her. It is such a beautiful experience, to read an author so deeply, and over such a long period of time. Lucky me, lucky all of us.
In closing, my dad blurbed Kelly’s first book, and here’s what he said.
Kelly Link seems always to speak from a deep, deeply personal, and unexpected standpoint. Story by story, she is creating new worlds, new frameworks for perception, right in front of our eyes. I think she is the most impressive writer of her generation.
—Peter Straub
Hell fucking yeah she is.
—Emma Straub
Well I bloody loved reading this, about someone I’ve never heard of. Going to read Lull right now. I thank you.
I have to be careful when I pick up something of Kelly's, as it is always, always a call to creative action; her particular subspecies of magic makes me want to drop everything and make the art of my life RIGHT THEN, and also to grab a lance and hit the hills and hassle someone who's hassling a dragon, or something. SEE YOU ON THE THIRTEENTH.