31 Shots of Shock: #9 – ‘Pretty Monsters’ by Kelly Link

*Title: Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link
Date Read: 09 October 2009
Available Online?: NO – read from Kelly Link’s published collection, Pretty Monsters (Canongate Books)
Briefly: Four female friends ‘kidnap’ another girl friend (and her sister who insists on coming along) in order to put her through the time-honoured ritual known as the Ordeal. Interwoven into the narrative of this story of the Ordeal is the tale of Clementine and her ongoing long-term crush on Cabell Meadows, a boy who saves her life, not once but twice.
Afterthoughts: And so we reach the final story in the Kelly Link’s Pretty Monsters and the titular story of the collection. At first it’s difficult to work out exactly what’s going on with this story – the narrative switching between the ‘kidnapping’, and the tale of the girl with a crush. However, with this being the ninth story I’ve read from Kelly Link, I was confident she was going to bring it all together in the end, and she does, kind of, although I felt there was no real conclusion at all.

Sadly for me, as with the opening story in this collection (The Wrong Grave), Pretty Monsters reminded me exactly which reading group Kelly Link was aiming this collection at i.e. the female young adult reader, so my final rating for this story is more to do with it not being a story for me, rather than any fault in the quality of Link’s storytelling; which I’m happy to say is up to her usual standards of writing and originality.
Notable Quote: Lee and Bad wait in the van while Nikki and Maureen knock on the front door. When Czigany opens the door, Bad high-fives Lee as Maureen grabs Czigany’s arm and Nikki ties the blindfold around her eyes. They have a pair of handcuffs borrowed from Maureen’s mother’s chest of drawers, the same place they found the blindfold.

Rating:

*Story read as part of my 31 Shots of Shock reading challenge.