Kelly Link's fourth (or fifth?) collection was a surprise. I remember liking less than half of her stories from her previous collections and I liked only half of these. But taken as a whole, reading the entirety of her work is worth the effort. Though I find the quality inconsistent there is a generally pleasing dreamlike aura to most of the stories. They are slow-paced and mature. There is a slight obsession with gender and sexuality. She is basically a mix between Angela Carter and Shirley Jackson. Her style is unadorned, simply plain, and meanders along like a current of a lazy river. You can recline into the flow and be carried along. They never sweep you away in an onrush of imagery or action, and they never send you plummeting through a cascade. They are long journeys with just enough detail to tantalize, and stir the mists of the imagination into motion.

When she is good she is really F'ing good. These are the kind of magical realist fairy tales that probably took years to write. They contain echoey depths. The perimeters of the stories are fuzzy, so that if you inhabit them too long, and let your mind wander into the shadows, you are likely to find greater mysteries waiting beyond the borders.

The first three stories really gripped me. The first: an absurdist tale relying heavily on the 'rule of three' about a wealthy eccentric demanding ever more ridiculous gifts from his three sons and the unbelievable occurrences encountered as a result, which culminate in a wacky and delightful ruse of anachronistic storytelling tropes out of the Arabian Nights combined with signature stoner wastoid musings. The theme of stoner wastoid musings is highly developed in the other stories as well and represents a throughline for this collection.

The next story was also a captivating descent into a purgatory alongside bizarre and quirky characters, each of whom suffer and fail and vie for the reader's attention. The inner same-sex love story was unconvincing. When you spend years with someone, supposedly loving them, how could you allow them to not tell you about their past? How could you live with a mystery for years, pretending that love was all that mattered, even in the face of horrors unknown? A false backstory for Prince Hat would have sufficed. But the focus of the story is the frustration and strange strategies of the protagonist and the antagonist - the latter being the strange girlfriend. Both initial stories make use of the 'rule of three' and lean heavily into enchantment. The settings are vivid and weird, but docile. The environments do not pose a threat. The people and sentient creatures are both sinister and far too hospitable. Any excess of hospitality in fairy tales is a sign that something will go horribly wrong.

The next story, about a person trapped between an airport and a hotel, who becomes infatuated with the facility pool, was fascinating and haunting. A brilliant immersion in a twilight zone of frozen time. It posits that the quiet, liminal moments we often fail to recognize can have a transformative power.

Then followed several unmemorable stories. Some of them, or pieces of them I thought were objectively bad. What did they accomplish? What were they about? They might as well have not even been there for all I cared about them. I was about to give up on the collection when I came to the final long story.

The final story, thankfully, was magnificent. It reminded me of Murakami with its wastoid stoner slacker setup, a contrived scenario into which I was allowed to immediately escape. The cabin in the woods. The indecisive narrator distracted from his work by a surreal slip into uncanny fairy tale encounters. It proceeded unpredictably and contained several engaging mini stories within the story. The ending was possibly meaningless, though you could read all kinds of meanings into it if you wanted. The patented ambiguity of Link's endings is frustrating but often irresistible.

I may have to revisit her other collections. The authors style of imitating and repurposing fairy tales is old hat in my opinion, but they so seldom resemble anything else I've seen that if she has to use the ingredients of folklore in order to whip up inspired retellings, if that is what gets the job done, then so be it.

Should short story collections take years to compile? Should writers feel obligated to add novels to their bibliography? For writers like Link and George Saunders, I feel like they're too popular to be niche and too niche to be popular. They are liminal. But their strength lies in their uniqueness. The experimental fiction I prefer makes use of ordinary language to conjure new combinations of imagery and metaphor. I prefer that to the messily experimental sentences of Arno Schmidt or anyone else labeled Avant-garde. In the end, memorability counts for more in my opinion.

3.5 stars. Thank you, NetGalley and Random House, for introducing me to the evocative, literary short stories by Kelly Link. These powerful, contemporary retellings of old fairy tales and folklore blend realism with fantasy with unsettling, thought-provoking results. Each story was eerie, and the modern settings made them more discomforting and weird. The stories were not the type I was expecting, with the exception of the terrific The White Cat's Divorce. I also enjoyed Skinder's Veil. Beautiful writing with sexual issues included in most stories. The date of publication is set for March 28, 2023.

I was delighted to be randomly chosen for an ARC of this book, as I've been a fan of Kelly Link for many years. Although several of these stories have appeared in other venues, I hadn't personally read any and they fit together as one surreal collection. The fairy tales Link has adapted tend to be lesser known ones (I knew the Musicians of Bremen but not, for instance, The White Cat) and after each one I compared with the original. None of them was tethered too tightly to the details of the original fairy tale, and Link ventured well into the "weird" with these. Part of the magic of her writing is her ability to stick a solid narrative in a surreal and even disturbing setting, whether it's Uncanny Valley-closeness to our own world, or really getting out there. Fans of her more realistic pieces may not enjoy this collection as much, but for me it was standard Kelly Link weird excellence. More than one story entertained only to sucker-punch right at the end. What more could I want? Will be another great example to my creative writing students about what you can do with skills and technique, regardless of setting and subject.

In this latest short story collection, Link adapts fairytales and folktales, some lesser known than others, twisting and molding the stories to a contemporary setting. Each story is delightful unnerving and slightly discomfiting. Kelly Link never disappoints and creates characters and settings that lodge in your subconscious and linger long after you're done reading.

I first encountered Kelly Link via her editing work for Monstrous Affections, and that led me to Magic for Beginners. I was dazzled, and she's been one of my favorite short story writers since then.

White Cat, Black Dog does not disappoint. Each short story is like a well-crafted gem. Each one is so different and yet contains outworldly, evocative imagery. My favorite of all of the short stories was The Lady and the Fox, a retelling of Tam Lin that makes the tale seem new and even more magical. But even if you're not inclined to fairytales, there's plenty here for you. The haunting White Road, about traveling in a post-apocalyptical world, is satisfyingly unsettling.

Highly recommended.

When you read too many Kelly Link stories back to back, your skin starts to feel too tight, like you are an overwatered tomato that is about to split its flesh. Her words take up space in your head and claw their way out.

The stories in the collection were previously published in various formats. And while I consider myself a Kelly Link fan, I am an unusual type of Kelly Link fan - the type of fan that reads her collections, but doesn't hunt down the anthologies or publications where she appears. In that way, these stories were new in the way that they might not be to other, more dedicated readers.

As is her way, each story is odd and lovely and deeply unsettling at its core. Each is a rip in the universe, a glitch in the matrix, a tilt of the head. Blink and the image shifts into something new. While "based" on fairy tales, some are more closely hewn to the source material, while some retain only the barest theme of the original.

And the writing? Did I mention the writing? Link commands the worlds she creates, each one bizarre and wicked and sad and tragic. She makes me want to write better. To write weirder.

My favorite, after the first reading, was probably the Station Eleven-esque The White Road, and the one that messed with my brain the most/that I admit that needs closer inspection was definitely The Game of Smash and Recovery.

I will read this again once I have recovered from the first read-through.

It's Kelly Link short stories--of course they're good! Excellent, even. I had already read most of these stories and even taught a few in my creative writing classes. I enjoyed reading them in a collection, but I do wish there was more than one new story. Still, like a super fan, I'll be buying this book and continuing to make her work part of my classes. Thank you for the opportunity to read the e-galley!

I'm a reader of short stories. I'd heard good thinks about Kelly Link. But these stories were too untethered from reality for me. They have a very plain style. I'm giving it three stars because I think it is much my taste as anything.

As I finished reading the first story in White Cat, Black Dog, I had a big smile on my face and the urge to prolong the pleasure to come by rationing myself to one story per week. Kelly Link fans (I'm one) will rejoice, and I hope we twist some arms to enlarge the ranks. And, by the way, one of the joys of reading short stories is that there's no need to rush, no forgetting what just happened if you put it down for a week.

I have been a Kelly Link fan for a very long time. In fact, every September I reread "The Summer People". Her work has always connected with me on such a deep level. I think she's one of the greatest short story writers alive today.
So, how to review a new collection of works? By reviewing each story on its own merit, of course. Each story in White Cat, Black Dog is a retelling of a fairy tale, but, honestly, they are so distinctly Kelly Link that it's like comparing apples to oranges. This is a collection of VERY strong, powerful stories. This is the kind of collection that you need to own so you can slide it out on a fall day, sit on a swing and fall back into the world of the story. While I loved all of them, the opening and closing stories are by far my new favorites. I predict they will get better and better with rereadings.
What a pleasure to get to read this collection before it was published. A big, huge Specialist's Hat thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Random House for the early access!

These are Kelly Link's best stories yet! Fans of fairy tale retellings need this in their lives. I read most stories twice and each one proved better the second time through.