Kelly Link has a sterling reputation as a writer of "strange, surreal short stories" that riff humorously on genres such as sci-fi, fantasy, and hard-boiled noir. The stories in White Cat, Black Dog are modern versions of fairy tales.
I have now read two Link collections and I find her stories to be... fine. The narratives hold my attention, the tone is mildly amusing, the conclusions are never what I expect. I'm entertained. They often include a sentence that jumps out as an important message, as fairy tales should:
He was discovering that being loved could be as productive of anxiety as the lack of it was. ("The White Cat's Divorce")
We all want things it would be better not to want... We pursue them anyway, don't we? ("Prince Hat Underground")
They are monsters, I think, because we do not understand why they do what they do. ("The White Road")
You cannot always be the person you thought you were, not matter how badly you want to be her. ("The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear")
However, they don't engage my imagination as I hoped they would.
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