Kelly Link Rethinks Familiar Patterns

Kelly Link’s fiction is where I go to get lost. Inspired by classic fables, the seven stories in her new collection White Cat, Black Dog feel timeless while being rooted firmly in our IRL world. “Each story in the collection is a response or entanglement with a fairytale,” Link told me. “Some are closer to retellings, and some just borrow structures or bits.”

In “The White Cat’s Divorce,” a man trapped in a blizzard finds refuge at a marijuana farm tended to by talking cats. In “Prince Hat Underground,” a middle-aged New Yorker named Gary learns that his mercurial husband was raised by fairy huldufölk of Iceland and is betrothed to the Queen of Hell. And in “The White Road,” a traveling troupe of actors are pursued by monsters in a post-apocalyptic United States. Evocative black and white illustrations by the Australian artist  contribute the immersive sense of wonder is a book that’s lived in as much as read.