This week, we’re taking a closer look at Powell’s Pick of the Month, White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link.
I vividly remember the night I was first introduced to Kelly Link’s work. I was 18 — young and dumb and wildly shy, living across the country from where I grew up. In Link’s new book, there’s a line that goes “Like the werewolf, we are uneasy in human spaces and human company, though we wear a human skin.” That’s how I was then: basically exactly like a werewolf, very uneasy, passably human, and only interested in writing and talking about writing.
That’s how I was then: basically exactly like a werewolf, very uneasy, passably human.
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I lived a few rooms down from another girl in my poetry workshop, who very sweetly and firmly decided that we were going to be friends, no matter how hard I tried to hide. One night, she invited me to join her in a small copse outside the dorm while she smoked. She’d rolled a cigarette and wanted some fresh air. I didn’t smoke, but, like a true 18-year-old, I loved the smell of American Spirits, so I joined her. She lit her cigarette, inhaled, and said, “Hey, have you heard of Kelly Link?”
Which is how my new friend happening upon a used copy of
Stranger Things Happen in an out-of-the-way used bookstore (the platonic ideal of bookstore shopping — happening to stumble upon a book by a soon-to-be-new-favorite author) also became my origin story as a fan of Kelly Link. I read her copy, and then immediately bought a copy of my own, quickly followed by
Magic for Beginners. Since then, I’ve cycled through I-don't-know how many copies of Link’s books. I give them out like candy to friends with circles around the stories in the table of contents that I want to make sure they don't miss (I end up just circling every story in the collection; it’s not ultimately a real time-saver for anyone).
Since then, I’ve cycled through I-don't-know how many copies of Link’s books. I give them out like candy to friends.
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Link’s magic as a writer is in the sheer wonder in her stories. They’re surreal and unexpected and so much fun — it’s such a gift when you can feel the writer’s joy and love for storytelling seeping through every word. Her new book,
White Cat, Black Dog, collects seven new stories that are her doing exactly what she does best: unbraiding well-worn folktales and weaving them back up into a form that’s somehow both recognizable and entirely new.
There are stories about sons sent on quests, siblings living on alien planets, an interminable airport hotel. You’ll recognize some of the characters — Rose Red, Snow White — and others will seem more like funhouse mirror reflections of archetypes you thought you understood. All of the stories are beautiful master-classes, but my absolute favorite is the one that closes out the book, “Skinder’s Veil.” It’s a story that aches and twists with the best of them, managing to be bleak and strange and hopeful all at once.
You’ll recognize some of the characters — Rose Red, Snow White — and others will seem more like funhouse mirror reflections of archetypes you thought you understood.
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It’s been 15 or so years since that autumn evening, when a friend invoked Kelly Link’s name for the first time. A blog doesn’t have quite the same ambiance, but I’d like you to imagine that you’re standing outside with a new friend and there’s a pause in the conversation (maybe awkward, maybe not), and into that pause, your new friend says, “Hey, have you heard of Kelly Link?”