Review: Coraline

It's a good thing I went to the library yesterday, because I woke up this morning S-I-C-K. I think I've caught my annual summer cold. Thankfully I have a nurse for a mom, plenty of throat antiseptic, and the wonderful, horrible freedom of unemployment.

At any rate, the first on my reading list (and #41 in my overall count this year!) was Coraline by Neil Gaiman. I did not see the movie (I do not have fond associations with stop-motion claymation, and there were plenty of other good movies I wanted to see at the time), but I thought I had pretty much figured it out from the trailer. I was very wrong, and greatly underestimated Gaiman's command of the English language. It turned out to be quite the delicious, if horrifying, treat.

Genre: novel, children's

Plot: Coraline is an adventurous young girl who one day wanders into a mysterious door in her home, and gets caught up in a dream-world somewhat akin to what I think a Tim Burton and Lewis Carroll collaboration would be like.

The plot was deceptively simple, and yet--like Gaiman's prose itself--the more you pondered it, the greater it seemed to get. It is easy to summarize, but very well crafted. Equally, the villains don't seem particularly gruesome, but somehow they are still pretty scary.

Structure: The thirteen short chapters were well paced; I finished it in about 2 hours. After so many books with prologues, epilogues, etc. etc., it was refreshing to get just a straight-forward narrative structure.

Execution: This is my first encounter with Gaiman, but I'm quite impressed. His prose reminded me greatly of C. S. Lewis (an all-time favorite author), in that what was said had a charming sort of polish to it, the kind that generates a quiet smile or amusing smirk. It was also very similar to the Alice in Wonderland series, only with more deliberately creepy elements.

I think in this instance, a sample is well-justified. Here was on my my favorite passages:
"Miss Spink and Miss Forcible made a point of telling Coraline how dangerous the well was, and they warned her to be sure she kept away from it. So Coraline set off to explore for it, so that she knew where it was, to keep away from it properly."

Theme: England, children's fantasy/horror

Read this if you're in the mood for children's horror. I know that sounds stupid, but that's really the best way I can describe this. Besides, I'm sick remember?

4 out of 5 stars

Other works:
Gaiman is an amazingly proficient author with awards in SEVERAL fields. I will here only focus on his other novels:
Neverwhere
Stardust
American Gods
Anansi Boys
The Graveyard Book

If you liked this, you might also like:
Kipling's The Jungle Book
Carroll's aforementioned Alice in Wonderland
Lewis' classic The Chronicles of Narnia