Kelly Link’s 'White Cat, Black Dog'

There’s something about starting out on the adventure of a new book by Kelly Link that feels like breathing out. This feeling doesn’t come from entering into some form of escapism but more from a release of tension and a willing of myself into the space and place she creates with her mastery of the written form. If you don’t already know her work, Link has published four previous story collections, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for one of them (Get in Trouble, 2016), and awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2018 for “pushing the boundaries of literary fiction in works that combine the surreal and fantastical with the concerns and emotional realism of contemporary life.” I’ve never been a fan of the separations between “genre” fiction and “literary” fiction particularly as much that passes for “literary” is, quite honestly, less than. There’s also much to be said for moving past tired forms of a specific type of “realism” into the boundless spaces available in “the surreal and fantastical.”