Anthony Doerr on Magic For Beginners

LitHub posted a list of 20 Great Writers on Their Favorite Story Collections which included this:

A one-size-fits-all story collection does not exist, of course—sometimes a writer needs some Borges and sometimes she needs some Lydia Davis. The writer who’s never heard of Barry Hannah probably requires a dose of Airships, and the writer who has never read Steven Millhauser needs to fall into “In the Reign of Harad IV” ASAP.

But if there’s one collection I find myself recommending more than others lately, it’s Kelly Link’s Magic For Beginners. Lots of student writers read Harry Potter or Percy Jackson as kids; maybe in their teens they moved on to Stephen King or Bradbury or Gaiman or (one hopes) LeGuin. I’m learning that these writers, when they’re being asked to read Edith Wharton or John Updike or Melville, are dazzled by Link’s ability to plant multiple limbs in multiple genres. She fuses childhood terrors with adult estrangement; her stories are gorgeous, delicate, spooky, human, and deeply layered.
–Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See