White Cat, Black Dog: Stories - Kelly Link - ★★.½

AUTHOR: Kelly Link

GENRE: Fairy Tale Retelling, Anthology.

RATING: 2.4 Stars.

In a Nutshell: Too bizarre for my liking. For a collection of fairy tale retellings, there isn’t enough fairy tale content in any story. Might work for those who enjoy speculative fiction that’s on the weirder side of the logical spectrum.

This collection contains seven stories, though most of them are way too long to be considered ‘short’ stories. They touch the bottom range of novella-length fiction.

The seven tales are all retellings of classic fairy tales or lore, the name of the original being mentioned under the title of each story herein. Most of the retellings are set in the contemporary world, and have characters that could have been memorable had they been written differently. That said, the characters are diverse, and their personality ranges from vulnerable to manipulative, one plus point of the book.

For a change, I knew every single one of the original tales, and this increased my excitement at first. After all, the fun of reading a retelling comes from recognising how the author has twisted the original work and given it a fresh spin. Alas! Most of these retellings are as different from the base story as Salem (Tamil Nadu, India) is from Salem (Massachusetts, USA). The only one that comes close to retaining the essence of the original is the first story, ‘The White Cat’s Divorce’ (based on the French fairy tale named ‘The White Cat’), which is, not surprisingly, the best story of the book.

Honestly, this collection left me feeling as if I was not clever enough to understand it. The stories were either too outlandish or too weird. The endings were too abrupt in most cases, leaving me with a strange kind of restlessness. More importantly, the stories felt quite random in their flow, almost as if they were meandering for the sake of it. There’s no rhyme or reason to the events being narrated, nor is every question answered.

The only story I read with unbroken interest from start to end was the first one. The last story, ‘Skinder's Veil’ (based on the German fairy tale ‘Snow-White and Rose-Red’) was another decent story. The rest were mostly duds for me.

I have heard a lot about this author, but this makes me wonder if I will ever read her works again. I guess we aren’t exactly a match made in book heaven – I love logic too much and her stories defy logic.

As always, I rated each story individually, but except for the above two stories (4.5 and 3.5 respectively), none touched even the 3 star mark.

The logical side of me rebelled against this collection. The emotional side of me didn’t understand the point of this collection. The whole of me felt depressed at how badly this went. However, if you are fond of bizarre stories that are more about the writing than the ending, you might still like this. After all, this was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, so what do I know!

Better if you aren’t reading this as a retelling collection but as a speculative fiction anthology.

2.4 stars, based on the average of my rating for each story.

My thanks to Random House Publishing Group - Random House and NetGalley for the DRC of “White Cat, Black Dog”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. Sorry this worked out so badly.