LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
Meet seven short stories filled to overflowing with beauty and stinging ferocity, they have the ability to slink their way onto any bookshelf and make themselves right at home. Kelly Link has taken fairy tales of old, reinvented and made them her own. Each story is headed with its new title, and the original too, from Snow-White and Rose-Red through to The Musicians of Bremen. As I read, each story became its own, markedly different, fabulously distinct, yet sitting in honour to the first. These tales may settle gently in your mind, or rush in with intent, all come with a provocative edge. I adored all of them, usually in a book of short stories several favourites muscle their way forward, here each one carved space in my thoughts to reside. You will meet animals that can talk, travel into the future, and discover the darkest reaches of hell. If you adore tales of tales of wonder and imagination, magic realism or speculative fiction, in other words stories that take hold and send your thoughts soaring, then this LoveReading Star Book is for you. White Cat, Black Dog contains the most wonderful storytelling, of the deepest dark kind, and I recommend it heart and soul.
Liz Robinson
Find This Book In
Primary Genre |
Fantasy
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Other Genres: |
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About
White Cat, Black Dog Synopsis
Seven ingeniously reinvented fairy tales that play out with astonishing consequences in the modern world, from one of today's finest short story writers - MacArthur 'Genius Grant' Fellow Kelly Link, bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Get in Trouble.
Finding seeds of inspiration in the Brothers Grimm, seventeenth-century French lore, and Scottish ballads, Kelly Link spins classic fairy tales into utterly original stories of seekers - characters on the hunt for love, connection, revenge, or their own sense of purpose.
In 'The White Cat's Divorce', an aging billionaire sends his three sons on a series of absurd goose chases to decide which will become his heir. In 'The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear', a professor with a delicate health condition becomes stranded for days in an airport hotel after a conference, desperate to get home to her wife and young daughter, and in acute danger of being late for an appointment that cannot be missed. In 'Skinder's Veil', a young man agrees to take over a remote house-sitting gig for a friend. But what should be a chance to focus on his long-avoided dissertation instead becomes a wildly unexpected journey, as the house seems to be a portal for otherworldly travelers - or perhaps a door into his own mysterious psyche.
Twisting and winding in astonishing ways, expertly blending realism and the speculative, witty, empathetic, and never predictable - these stories remind us once again of why Kelly Link is incomparable in the art of short fiction.
About This Edition
ISBN: |
9781804548424 |
Publication date: |
9th November 2023 |
Author: |
Kelly Link |
Publisher: |
Head of Zeus |
Format: |
Paperback |
Pagination: |
272 pages |
Primary Genre |
Fantasy
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Other Genres: |
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Press Reviews
Kelly Link Press Reviews
A luminous and unsettling collection of fables, with flashes of surreal humour -- Kate Mascarenhas, author of The Psychology of Time Travel
I don't know how to describe it. I don't know if I'm allowed to describe it. The best I can offer is that it's like an eldritch Our Town. It's spectacularly weird and heartbreaking and funny, and it contains some of the most beautiful writing I've ever encountered. -- Leigh Bardugo, author of Shadow and Bone
This is fiction that pulls you swiftly into its world and then holds you completely, lingering like an especially intense dream. Enchanting, mesmerizing, brilliant work. - Publishers Weekly, starred review
Reading Kelly Link is stepping onto a slide that spirals you down into the heart of the kaleidoscope, splashes you into a technicolor fairy tale, and either makes you smile wide enough that you cry, or the other way around. Her storytelling is wondrous and fanciful, full of longing and terror. -- Stephen Graham Jones
Kelly Link's stories are spooky and funny, grounded and floating, and, as always, completely her own. There is no mistaking a story by Kelly Link. This book is sublime -- Emma Straub
Reading Kelly Link makes my heart burst with gladness. Perfect for longtime fans as well as new readers, these seven mischievous, nimble, joyful, wise, awe-inspiring, soul-enriching, positively Linkian fairy tales will make you feel like you're discovering the power of stories for the very first time and will expand your capacity for enchantment in our jaded world. White Cat, Black Dog is a book I will read, reread, and treasure all my life -- Jessamine Chan, author of The School for Good Mothers
Author
About Kelly Link
Kelly Link lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, run Small Beer Press and publish the zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. She once won a free trip around the world by answering the question, 'Why do you want to go around the world?' ('Because you can't go through it.')
More About Kelly Link