Scan barcode
A review by lizshayne
White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link
challenging
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
This is one of those books that makes me sad that there isn't a secret way to give a book six stars.
This is also why I wait until the last possible minute to do my reading retrospectives because I get to read gems like this halfway through December.
Everyone who was talking about this book was right about how brilliant it is and it is ENTIRELY my kind of thing. Fairy tales reimagined by someone with a deep and true sense of how to shape them? Yes, PLEASE.
Link's work is so brilliant because she is perfectly willing to keep the impossibility of fairy tales alive. There's no explanation, no maguffin, no scientific reason why the fairy tales are playing out. The stories follow their own logic as they always do, but the transposition of characters and settings to ask "what kind of person would this story happen to" and " what would they look like" and "What (else) is this story about" is so good.
Also I'm biased because both "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" and "Tam Lin" are in this collection and they are some of my favorites. And Link handles them so well.
But I can't even pick a favorite. They're all so good and so interesting in their own way and just...crunchy in the ways they become about the fears and demons and stresses and complexities of modern life. And the choice to not let them be 1:1 correspondences but riffs on the original is just so smart.
This is also why I wait until the last possible minute to do my reading retrospectives because I get to read gems like this halfway through December.
Everyone who was talking about this book was right about how brilliant it is and it is ENTIRELY my kind of thing. Fairy tales reimagined by someone with a deep and true sense of how to shape them? Yes, PLEASE.
Link's work is so brilliant because she is perfectly willing to keep the impossibility of fairy tales alive. There's no explanation, no maguffin, no scientific reason why the fairy tales are playing out. The stories follow their own logic as they always do, but the transposition of characters and settings to ask "what kind of person would this story happen to" and " what would they look like" and "What (else) is this story about" is so good.
Also I'm biased because both "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" and "Tam Lin" are in this collection and they are some of my favorites. And Link handles them so well.
But I can't even pick a favorite. They're all so good and so interesting in their own way and just...crunchy in the ways they become about the fears and demons and stresses and complexities of modern life. And the choice to not let them be 1:1 correspondences but riffs on the original is just so smart.