White Cat, Black Dog

A fascinating series of stories, each based on a fairy or folk tale, that then gets turned by the author into her own tales. Some maintain the fairy tale atmosphere, while others take on a fantasy or contemporary tone. I was not familiar with some of the sources used for the stories, but it is worth looking them up after reading the stories here to see the similarities and differences between the source materials and her stories.

• The White Cat's Divorce: a rich man who can get anything fears growing old and sets his sons tasks to determine who will inherit his wealth. As usual, the youngest one manages to fulfil the wishes with unusual results when he meets a talking white cat that helps him out. But the strangest result would come when the cat insists on meeting his father.

• Prince Hat Underground: the relationship between Prince Hat and his lover are interrupted when Prince Hat's former fiancée suddenly appears and whisks him away. The lover then goes on a journey to Iceland and then down underground into another world to find Prince Hat and find out how he wants to live.

• The White Road: in a future when an unknown calamity has occurred, a travelling theatre group which also acts as a messenger service travels to the town of Bremen, with a strange white road running alongside them in the distance. It is only when they get to Bremen, and discover a disaster, do they realize that they have to give a realistic performance to save their lives from whatever inhabits the white road.

• The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear: a traveller is stuck at an airport, waiting for an available flight during a weather disruption. While there, she learns her child at home is getting scared; a situation which she is struggling to understand when, at last, a flight home opens.

• The game of Smash and Recovery: a girl and a boy play games on a distant world while waiting for a long delayed rescue by their parents. But in one of the games, the girl does the unexpected and discovers the truth about herself, hidden in a forbidden area of the planet.

• The Lady and the Fox: during a snowy Christmas at a house, a young girl sees a face at a window, whom she later discovers is that of a young man. But at subsequent meetings, when the man only appears when it snows at Christmas, she finds herself falling in love with him. Now, she is determined to discover why he can only appear at that time, and how to keep him in our world.

• Skinder's Veil: a man is asked by his friend to help take care of a house in the woods while she is away. He is given strict, and unusual, instructions about who can enter the house. Following the rules, he lets in a series of travellers, both human and non-human, which tell him seemingly disconnected stories that gradually reveal just who the owner of the house really is.