Wait wait wait Link got nominated for the Pulitzer for Get in Trouble?! 
 I'm so torn. I love Kelly Link. Link was one of the first so-called fabulist writers that I ever read, that made me realize where the genre could go. But.... only two and a half stories left in Get in Trouble, and the only one that really stuck for me was "The Lesson," and that was only because the last paragraph gave me chills. Just not really my thing so far. 
 ...oh god, I'm one of those hipsters that stand there and sneer that "their earlier stuff was better" but.... her earlier stuff was better. "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose" made me read/dream/hallucinate the inside of a fucking coffin. I still remember "Travels with the Snow Queen" and "The Faery Handbag" and "The Specialist's Hat." 
 Mostly just scratching my head with bewilderment. 
 Edit: I really liked "Two Houses" too - I mean, ghost stories in space. C'mon. No but really, the sheer desperation of astronauts who will never see their homes again, haunted by everyone they have lost... When I read short stories, I look for that taut-wire moment, when everything in the story has been slowly building up to a point that pulls as fine and sharp and honest as a taut wire vibrating with tension, and then the author lets the curtain fall. That's it for me. "Two Houses" was probably the one story where Link pulled this off, but those moments are perfect and rare. 
 Anyway, I sound really down on this collection, but I'm not. maybe it was outsized expectations; I still enjoyed it, overall, and Link's brain has got to be a fabulous place to play in. It might also be because I recently went on a George Saunders and Karen Russell bender. I think I've come to love the way they ground their stories in the absolute mundanity of living in a world devoid of magic - it makes the fantastical elements in their stories shimmer with more truth than most literary fiction can strain towards. Link, on the other hand, feels like you've been slingshotted out into space. It feels like a dream reality, and maybe I want a little too much weight. 
 (Also: Link has picked up a bit of a YA-feel in some of her stories - definitely "Secret Identity" and "The New Boyfriend." I don't think I like it. "Secret Identity" was still fun because who doesn't relate to being 15, and feeling like you'll never love again? But "The New Boyfriend" just. wouldn't. end. and I really did not care.)