The Faery Handbag by Kelly Link

“The Faery Handbag” is a 2004 science fiction novelette by Kelly Link. It is about a girl whose grandmother has a handbag with a whole village of fairies in it.

Non-Spoiler Summary In A Nutshell:

Genevieve is a young girl who has a very cool grandma – one who is tall, has long black hair, rides bicycles, loves to go to movies and is quite good at Scrabble. She is also a great liar. She is constantly telling Genevieve about her black handbag – how she is the guardian of the villagers that live inside it and who only come out once every several years to watch movies and go to the library. As Genevieve grows older she pays less heed to her grandmother’s stories and more attention to Jake – the tall, smart, nice boy from school. Ah… to be young and in love! Life is great, until Jake meets her grandmother and uses those smarts of his to determine just how true all the outlandish tales are!

“I thought he’d left me,” Zofia said. “For almost twenty years I thought he’d left me and your mother and taken off for California. Not that I minded. I was tired of being married and cooking dinners and cleaning house for someone else. It’s better to cook what I want to eat, and clean up when I decide to clean up. It was harder on your mother, not having a father. That was the part that I minded most.

“Then it turned out that he hadn’t run away after all. He’d spent one night in the handbag and then come out again twenty years later, exactly as handsome as I remembered, and enough time had passed that I had forgiven him all the quarrels. We made up and it was all very romantic and then when we had another fight the next morning, he went and kissed your mother, who had slept right through his visit, on the cheek, and then he climbed right back inside the handbag. I didn’t see him again for another twenty years. The last time he showed up, we went to see “Star Wars” and he liked it so much that he went back inside the handbag to tell everyone else about it. In a couple of years they’ll all show up and want to see it on video and all of the sequels too.”

“Tell them not to bother with the prequels,” I said.

My Two Cents:

• The good:

• This is an amazingly well written short story! The description of The Garment District alone makes it worth reading this story!
• The handbag. Yep, it is quite a nifty invention being able to hold so many people with its special clasp.
• Have you ever wondered why some authors win all the awards? After reading “The Faery Handbag” you’ll figure it out. Ms. Link’s story telling style and attention to details are astounding! Yes – ASTOUNDING!

• The bad:

• It’s not really a science fiction story – it’s more of a fantasy story. You know – one of those stories that “crosses genre boundaries” and all that. In fact I debated whether or not to post a review of it, then I remembered “Oh yeah – it’s my blog – I’ll do whatever I want!” Mwa ha ha ha!
• There are a couple instances of mild profanity – nothing too intense.

Fact Sheet:
• Page Count: 12
• Word Count: 8,061
• “The Faery Handbag” garnered the following awards:

• It won the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.
• It won the 2006 Nebula Award for Best Novelette.
• It won the 2005 Locus Award.
• It was also nominated for the 2005 British SF award, the 2005 Fountain award and the 2005 World Fantasy award.

Where you can find “The Faery Handbag”:

• This novelette first appeared in the 2004 collection of short stories entitled The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm.
• “The Faery Handbag” is included in Kelly Link’s book Magic for Beginners.
• You can read a very nice free version of “The Faery Handbag” at lcrw.net.

Some Interesting Links:

• Did you know that Kelly Link co-edits the anthology series Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror? Yep. You can learn more about this amazing author at Wikipedia.
• If you liked this story then you may want to check out Strange Horizons review of the entire Magic for Beginners book.

Craving More Stories?
If you enjoyed this story then you might also like Distant Replay, about an elderly man who meets a woman that looks and acts exactly like his deceased wife, by Mike Resnick.

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