Siempre he pensado que Kelly Link escribe muy bien, pero sus historias se van un poco demasiado al camino weird para que me acaben de convencer. White Cat, Black Dog está compuesto de siete relatos que reinventan cuentos clásicos, pero con ese toque de surrealismo que es una de sus características principales aunque estén situados en el mundo moderno. Están escritos de una manera exquisita y tanto si conoces como si no conoces los originales en los que están basados, creo que merece la pena leerlos. Además, cuenta con la ventaja de que la longitud de la obra completa no llega a las trescientas páginas y ya se sabe que lo bueno, si breve, dos veces bueno. Recopila historias publicadas originalmente en otros lugares, lo que hace que no tengan un hilo conductor entre ellas, más allá del propio retelling.


Como en toda antología de relatos, los hay que gustarán más y menos al lector, pero creo que en esta ocasión la autora ha sabido mantener un nivel bastante alto en todos ellos. Se notan ciertas pautas en las adaptaciones, principalmente el uso de sustancias alucinógenas y en especial, ese aura de irrealidad que convierte lo mundano en extraordinario cuando se le da un toque fantástico. Los escenarios también están trabajados de una forma que atrapa al lector, como esa compañía ambulante en un mundo postapocalíptico que ejerce las funciones de correo a la vez que entretiene a los supervivientes o esa mansión alejada de todo y de todos que recibe extraños visitantes. Cada relato es una pequeña perla que se engarza en el imaginario del lector.

No voy a desgranar cada relato porque, sinceramente, creo que es mejor adentrarse en la lectura sin saber muy bien qué te vas a encontrar.

Great book, really liked it.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me access to this book in exchange for my feedback.

Whimsical and weird, a fab collection of reimagined fairy tales.

Brought to life with a modern spin, these classics didn't lose any charm.

My two favourite stories The White Cat and Prince Hat Underground kicked the collection off and promised the reader a wild ride. While I feel like it had a stronger beginning than ending, averaging the stories out gave me a four star rating overall.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an arc of this book.

Like most short story collections, a real mixed bag which is why it’s taken me a while to write this. Some of the story’s were great, dreamlike and compelling. Others felt like what happens when Ai write short stories and gets it completely wrong so you end up reading just random nonsense.
I’ve read a couple of books by Kelly link previously (not through netgalley) and really enjoyed them so feel a bit sad that this one wasn’t the same. Perhaps wasn’t the book for me, even if it was well written in places.

This is a collection of short stories that I have dipped in now & again for the last few months. I was attracted to the idea of the retelling of fairy tales - I think I was expecting the retold tales to be more familiar. I did enjoy some of them particularly Skinder's Veil although I found other overlong.

Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting me read & review this book.

White Cat, Black Dog is a collection of 7 re-imagined fairy tales set in the modern world.

Some stories I really enjoyed for the odd-ness of them such as The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear. Other stories I feel like I missed something.

Was definitely an interesting read still and I would read more from this author.

Many thanks to Head of Zeus and Kelly Link for the advanced copy of White Cat, Black Dog via NetGalley, in return for my honest and unbiased review. Quick note: I don’t recap plots in my reviews, as it’s easy enough to read the book’s synopsis and blurbs, I purely focus on my feelings & opinions of how the books makes me feel.

This collection of 7 short stories was, for me, a mixed bag. Some were great (Skinder’s Veil being my favourite) and some were not so much (The White Cat’s Divorce). I am puzzled by the choices the editors made for the order of the stories, as I feel the weakest story was used to open the book, and it almost caused me to put the book down entirely and not read the remaining six.

It should be noted that, as the blurb states, these are not retellings, but stories inspired by fairy tales and folk tales. Not much of the original/classic tale is left in these stories, although the general gist is still there.

An interesting collection of stories, which will appeal to a range of genre interests.

Moods: adventurous, challenging, dark, mysterious, tense
Pace: fast
Trigger warnings: Blood/Gore, Death, Drugs, Infidelity, Murder

Rating 3.75/5 rounded up to 4

This was a nice collection of weird short stories in the magical realism genre.
I didn’t like each story as much. I especially liked Prince Hat & Skinder’s Veil.
I rate this book 3,5/5

These weird stories pulled me right out of a reading slump! If you live magical realism and are up for some weirdness, this might be for you.

I didn't know the reference/base of these stories, but nevertheless I truly enjoyed most of them—especially the creepy vibes running through all of them.

Captivating, weird little stories. Perfect for when you want to read magical realism but don't want to read a whole book.

This was an enjoyable short story collection. I’m a huge sucker for fairytale inspired tales!
I enjoyed the stories to varying degrees but this averaged out as a 3 star rating which doesn’t feel like it gives the book justice because I did really enjoy most of these stories. My individual ratings are below:

The White Cat’s Divorce 3/5
Prince Hat Underground 4.25/5
The White Road 3.5/5
The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear 3.5/5
The Game of Smash and Recovery 1.5/5
The Lady and the Fox 4/5
Skindler’s Veil 3/5

My favourite stories were Prince Hat Underground and The Lady and the Fox.

I enjoyed the creepy and haunting vibe throughout. I’ll definitely be looking out for more books by this author!

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

I'm not sure what I was expecting from this, but I was rather disappointed, I wasn't familiar with the original stories for the most part, so maybe I missed the point in terms of the retellings, but I just found that the writing was rather juvenile in style and the stories themselves were not very captivating. The 'short stories' seemed to drag on and it was a bit of a struggle to finish.

The way I felt about this book was similar to a lot of readers. This is definitely one of the most memorable books I've ever read, and that's because it was so weird and strangely plotted out. I enjoyed the fact that it was multiple retellings of different fairytales, and that the spin on the traditional tale was thought provoking and attention grabbing.

The writing feels like it's a bedtime tale to me, and I didn't necessarily dislike that, but I didn't love it at the same time. I'm really on the fence about this book, but I know that others have really enjoyed it.

3★
“The White Road (The Musicians of Bremen)

All of this happened a very long time ago and so, I suppose, it has taken on the shape of a story, a made-up thing, rather than true things that happened to me and to those around me. Things I did and that others did. And so I will write it down that way. As a story.”

The seven stories in this collection are inspired by old tales, fairy or traditional, with the title of the old tales written underneath Link’s titles. I admit I didn’t know some of the original fairy tales or fables, and the ones I did, I had a hard time connecting with Link’s.

Having said that, the ones I enjoyed, I really enjoyed. The ones I didn’t like, I skimmed. They are far-fetched, but then what folktales aren’t? We who choose to read them learn to accept that people transform into animals and vice-versa. If we can suspend disbelief that far, what are the boundaries?

I won’t discuss the stories, just select a few representative quotations. This is about a man who wants to live forever.

“The White Cat’s Divorce
(The White Cat)
All stories about divorce must begin some other place, and so let us begin with a man so very rich, he might reach out and have almost any thing he desired. . .”

He intends to live as well as possible until

“ a day in which an expert team will cryogenically freeze my body as well as the body of my current wife until such a time when medical advances can resurrect me into some unknown hellish future in a body that can satisfy more than three women at a time while also battling apocalyptic mutant lizards and conquering whatever remains of the New York Stock Exchange.”

Another I liked was Prince Hat, particularly this description of the seasons of the sun.

“Prince Hat Underground
(East of the Sun, West of the Moon)
And who, exactly is Prince Hat? Gary, who has lived with Prince Hat for over three decades, still sometimes wonders.
. . .
Off to Reykjavik goes Gary. When he was here with Prince Hat, all those years ago, it was summer. Light the nurse washing everyone and everything, light the voyeur seeping in around the black seal of curtains in their hotel room. It pressed on his eyeballs, lapped hotly at his skin and came pouring out through him again like a tide when he tried to sleep. He and Prince Hat went to clubs, danced, drank, came out at 3 A.M. and found light the idler still waiting for them.
. . .

Now, like Prince Hat, the sun is sly, sneaks off as soon as you’ve caught sight of it, staying away as if it means to stay away forever.”

I enjoy quirky stories and grew up loving old myths and legends. This selection is right out there, and I’m balancing the ones I loved against the ones I didn’t care for to arrive at my (completely subjective) middle-of-the-road rating.

If you have access, you might enjoy the article about this book in the 3 April 2023 edition of ‘The New Yorker’ with the headline ‘The Story Goes.’

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/03/white-cat-black-dog-kelly-link-book-review

Thanks to NetGalley and Head of Zeus Publishing for the copy for review.

Review in progress and to come.

I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review

An enjoyable short story collection that defies genre and style across the 7 stories included with it. Some definite thought provoking points are also included.

This book consists of 7 beautifully written short stories, all the stories are enough to leave multiple thoughts and questions in your head, but also so in-depth that they could all be novels within there own right. Throughout reading each story, I would get half way through and believe that that one was my favourite so far and thus the cycle began again by time I began the next. All of the stories, all though unrelated were all equally random so is a perfect read for someone in a reading block or looking for a bit of a different book (my personal favourite was Prince Hat).

White Cat, Black Dog: Stories by Kelly Link is a collection of seven short stories each with a slightly different style, not all within the same genre.
One of the best things about this book is the variety of stories on offer. Each one is different from the last, with "The White Cat's Divorce," being my favourite, "The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear," being my least and for me, "Prince Hat Underground," seemed to go on for a little too long.
However, this is a minor criticism and shouldn't deter anyone from picking up this book.
Overall, I enjoyed White Cat, Black Dog: Stories a lot, never really sure where the stories are going to take me.

This is it. This is the weird and slightly disturbing short story collection that's going to haunt me until the end of my days. So this was a mixed bag. The writing wasn't great. There was a lot of stuff that wasn't needed in the stories and honestly some of the stories bored me completely, probably because they were trying to say something that I didn't get. But I enjoyed some of them and the last story Skinder's Veil, I am obsessed with.

Skinder's Veil is about a PHD student who goes to housesit for someone to get away from his annoying roommate. I didn't need to know all the stuff about how the roommate had so much sex and that his girlfriend was haunted by a ghost. That all bogged down the story. It could have easily been summed up in a couple of lines. But the actual bits in the house and the descriptions of the visitors and the magic of it all completely captivated me. I've been thinking about it since I read it and I definitely want to read it again some time.

The rest of the book, I will not revisit. I enjoyed some of the stories well enough, but not enough to read again. but the weirdness of it all and that last story is gonna be something that I think I'm gonna remember for a long time.

Kelly Link’s collection of seven stories cleverly retells well known and more obscure fairy tales. She managed to capture the essence of each story while presenting tales that feel entirely new.