White Cat, Black Dog

White Cat, Black Dog is Kelly Link’s 2023 collection of seven short stories, each one a contemporary reimagining of a classic fairy tale. Link has spent her career working in the territory where literary fiction, fantasy, and fairy tale collide, and this collection shows her at the height of her powers. Each story is built on the bones of a familiar tale. The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Hansel and Gretel. East of the Sun and West of the Moon. The White Cat. Snow White and Rose Red. But Link does not write retellings in the simple sense. She uses the old structures as starting points and lets her contemporary characters discover the strange logic of fairy tale time and consequence in their modern lives.

The characters include a man traveling to the Catskills to deliver a strange package on his estranged friend’s behalf. A young man trying to find his way out of a magical hotel that does not let guests leave. A woman who has been turned into a cat by an unfaithful husband and is now back in the world looking for him. The settings are often contemporary American but always tilted slightly out of true, the way Link’s stories have always been. Reality wobbles. The rules of cause and effect bend in ways that the characters slowly come to recognize and adapt to.

Link is one of the great American short story writers of her generation, and the discipline of working inside fairy tale forms has produced some of her sharpest work here. The prose is precise without being cold. The humor is dry and frequent. And the stories build toward endings that resist easy resolution while still feeling earned.

For readers who came to Link through her earlier collections like Stranger Things Happen or Magic for Beginners, White Cat, Black Dog is the long awaited new collection. For new readers, this is a strong entry point into one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary literary fantasy. The illustrations by Shaun Tan, included in some editions, complete the package.