Reading roundtable #5: 'The faery handbag'

Join us for discussion of Kelly Link's 'The faery handbag'

For Issue five, we are looking at an older tale by renowned author Kelly Link as the subject of our reading roundtable. ‘The faery handbag’ is a fantasy novelette that was originally released in The faery reel: Tales from the twilight realm, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (2004). This story won a slew of accolades including a Hugo, a Nebula, and a Locus award for Best Novelette.

You can read the story online at Kelly Link’s website here. It can also be found in her brilliant short story collection Magic for beginners (2005), which won the Locus award for best collection.

This story opens in Boston’s Garment District, a place Genevieve scours on a regular basis in hopes of finding her grandmother Zofia’s missing handbag. This two-hundred-year-old family heirloom is ‘big enough to hold a chicken, an egg, and a cooking pot’. As the story continues we learn that hidden inside the handbag is the village of Baldeziwurlekistan:

and all the people under the hill and mountains and forests and seas and rivers and lakes and orchards and a sky and stars and spirits and fabulous monsters and sirens and dragons and dryads and mermaids and beasties and all the little gods that the Baldeziwurlekistanians and people under the hill worshipped.

Zofia safeguards the handbag, and Genevieve (who happens to have a bit of faery in her blood) will one day take over her grandmother’s role as guardian of the magical purse. What could possibly go wrong?

A quick recap on reading roundtables at The Orange & Bee

The reading roundtables are only available to paid subscribers. If you haven’t moved to that level yet, we hope you will consider joining us. Each reading roundtable includes an introduction to a specific text; an exploration of connected social, cultural, and/or scientific material; and some questions to ponder.

There are no set rules or guidelines to follow. Whatever your responses (thoughts! feelings! wonderings!), we invite you to offer them courageously and boldly. The only thing we ask is that you take an approach to the text that’s largely curious and appreciative, focused on engaging deeply and honestly with the text, and with each other.

In this collaborative space, we are hoping to spark creativity through close reading. Other things we hope to see emerge include insights into the craft of writing, the connection between folkloric traditions and contemporary writing, and a deeper understanding of the focus story through active engagement.