Coraline

by Neil Gaiman (Goodreads author!)

published	October 6th 2003 by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
first published	2002
binding	Paperback
isbn	0747562105 (isbn13: 9780747562108)
ebook
pages	192
description	Coraline lives with her preoccupied parents in part of a huge old house--a house so huge that other people live in it, too... round, old former actr...more [close] Coraline lives with her preoccupied parents in part of a huge old house--a house so huge that other people live in it, too... round, old former actresses Miss Spink and Miss Forcible and their aging Highland terriers ("We trod the boards, luvvy") and the mustachioed old man under the roof ("'The reason you cannot see the mouse circus,' said the man upstairs, 'is that the mice are not yet ready and rehearsed.'") Coraline contents herself for weeks with exploring the vast garden and grounds. But with a little rain she becomes bored--so bored that she begins to count everything blue (153), the windows (21), and the doors (14). And it is the 14th door that--sometimes blocked with a wall of bricks--opens up for Coraline into an entirely alternate universe. Now, if you're thinking fondly of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, you're on the wrong track. Neil Gaiman's Coraline is far darker, far stranger, playing on our deepest fears. And, like Roald Dahl's work, it is delicious. What's on the other side of the door? A distorted-mirror world, containing presumably everything Coraline has ever dreamed of... people who pronounce her name correctly (not "Caroline"), delicious meals (not like her father's overblown "recipes"), an unusually pink and green bedroom (not like her dull one), and plenty of horrible (very un-boring) marvels, like a man made out of live rats. The creepiest part, however, is her mirrored parents, her "other mother" and her "other father"--people who look just like her own parents, but with big, shiny, black button eyes, paper-white skin... and a keen desire to keep her on their side of the door. To make creepy creepier, Coraline has been illustrated masterfully in scritchy, terrifying ink drawings by British mixed-media artist and Sandman cover illustrator Dave McKean. This delightful, funny, haunting, scary as heck, fairy-tale novel is about as fine as they come. Highly recommended. (Ages 11 and older) --Karin Snelson [close]
date added	05-10-07 edit book

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Chris rated it:

(review of isbn 0061139378)

08/12/08

Read in August, 2008

It's a strange sort of place into which Coraline and her parents have recently moved An old house with a pair of washed up actresses on the ground floor, who go by the names of Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, and a cracked old fellow in the attic who's failing in his attempt to stage a mouse circus. It seems the mice won't sing the songs he's written for them. Coraline meets these people, for the most part, because her parents are very adept at ignoring her. Coraline's parents are busy parents...more It's a strange sort of place into which Coraline and her parents have recently moved An old house with a pair of washed up actresses on the ground floor, who go by the names of Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, and a cracked old fellow in the attic who's failing in his attempt to stage a mouse circus. It seems the mice won't sing the songs he's written for them. Coraline meets these people, for the most part, because her parents are very adept at ignoring her. Coraline's parents are busy parents. They work on computers, and so stay at home, but they don't have much time for Coraline. They push her aside, tell her to read, to play with her toys, to explore but not too far, anything, it seems, so that she will let them alone to their work. On a rainy day she walks into her father's study and his eyes never stray from the computer, he only mumbles to her to go and count things: the windows, the doors, things that are blue.

Coraline likes to explore things. A useful trait for a lonely girl. She's wandered all over the grounds of her strange, new home. Through the chestnut groves and across the decaying, abandoned tennis courts. She's dropped rocks into a deep, dark well and counted the seconds before the splash. As such, she didn't say no to her father's suggestion. She counted the blue things, the windows, and doors. One door interested her more than the others. A locked door, which Coraline's mother says leads nowhere. Coraline doesn't believe this, despite her mother taking a small, exasperated pleasure in unlocking the door to show her daughter the very solid, brick wall behind it.

But of course, it does go somewhere. Such are the rules in story--doors that seem to lead nowhere end up taking you to the most interesting places. For Coraline, the world on the other side of the door is a lot like the world she came from, but different. There's the same rooms, the same furniture. The same people too. A kooky, man in the attic. The actresses down below, though here, they're working--performing on stage for an audience of dogs. Even her parents are there, though there's something strange about them, too. For one they pay attention to her. For another, they're a little too pale and their fingers a bit long. Also, their eyes have been removed and replaced with shiny, black buttons. But they do love Coraline. They really, really, do.

Coraline is a scary book. Not axe-murderer scary, or werewolf scary. No, Gaiman's after a terror more subtle--the kind of scuttling fear you feel when walking home alone at night, or when passing by and glancing into a mirror, you don't recognize yourself or the room behind you. That cold sticky feeling that squiggles in your stomach when you feel something's off. For Coraline, the world beyond the door promises love, and for a time, its skewed sort of reality entices her. She likes to explore after all, and this world offers up strange wonders for such girls as Coraline. But the more time she spends in this other world, the more her stomach gets that squiggly, wrong feeling. She finds children like her locked away and forgotten behind a mirror, rats serenade her with songs of feasting. And eventually, Coraline recognizes that, though, the other mother truly does seem to love her, it's a love that’s as twisted as everything else in this other world.

Gaiman’s writing has a warmth to it. He has compassion for all his characters, even the monsters. One gets the feelng, for example, that the other mother makes a habit of this sort of thing, collecting the souls of ignored and forgotten children--children who long for love so much they might overlook little things like buttons for eyes or fingers a touch too long--only to herself, after a time, forget about them as well. Both Coraline and the other Mother long to love and to be loved. No one wants to be left alone in the dark. But that’s what Coraline does to us, the readers, it leads us, rather warmly, down into the dark, cold places. It reminds us what it is to be small and alone, afraid of the dark and hungry for love. It’s a wonderful, quiet, affecting sort of story and it deserves to be read out loud and shared with someone you love.
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