Kelly Link Is Committed to the Fantastic

In “The Book of Love,” a début novel from the short-story writer Kelly Link, three teen-agers find themselves in their music teacher’s classroom in the middle of the night. They are wearing costumes from “Bye Bye Birdie,” and they remember only “a blotted, attenuated, chilly nothingness” from which they’ve slipped “one by one by one,” as if through a “loose stitch.” They have come back from the dead. Their music teacher, who is involved somehow, informs them that they must compete in a series of mysterious tasks to determine who will remain alive and who will return to nonbeing. There’s Laura, a gifted guitarist with hints of Tracy Flick; Mo, who is sensitive and logorrheic; and Daniel, who would like to be excluded from his own Lazarus narrative. Sleeping at home is Susannah, Laura’s older sister and Daniel’s ex-girlfriend, who may have had something to do with their deaths.