I brought this with me to work because I was nearly finished with Old Man's War, and being without a book to fill the empty spaces at work is almost physically painful. My only other option would be to try and join in the conversations at work, but they're often either on topics I care nothing about (sports, workouts) or redundant bitch sessions where everyone already agrees with each other (politics, work). So, I read.
And today I read Coraline.
It's good. Not Gaiman's best, in my opinion, which is apparently an opinion that many other Gaiman fans do not share. There's a huge following out there for Coraline, so something definitely clicked with the readership, but it didn't with me. I plowed through this book in a matter of hours, and while it was certainly a tightly-written, well-imagined story, it didn't resonate the way I thought it would.
Maybe I have to be eleven years old. And a girl. For my money...more
I brought this with me to work because I was nearly finished with Old Man's War, and being without a book to fill the empty spaces at work is almost physically painful. My only other option would be to try and join in the conversations at work, but they're often either on topics I care nothing about (sports, workouts) or redundant bitch sessions where everyone already agrees with each other (politics, work). So, I read.
And today I read Coraline.
It's good. Not Gaiman's best, in my opinion, which is apparently an opinion that many other Gaiman fans do not share. There's a huge following out there for Coraline, so something definitely clicked with the readership, but it didn't with me. I plowed through this book in a matter of hours, and while it was certainly a tightly-written, well-imagined story, it didn't resonate the way I thought it would.
Maybe I have to be eleven years old. And a girl. For my money, Clive Barker's The Thief of Always is a much better "Young-person-casts-off-illusions-and-outwits-a-vastly-more-powerful-otherworldly-entity-and-comes-to-appreciate-the-realities-of-life" story.
Coraline, a young girl who, like many young people, finds her real life incredibly boring and unsatisfying, discovers a secret door in her house. When she goes through, she finds her Other-mother waiting for her, willing to give her whatever she wants if she would stay. Coraline is, of course, too smart for that. But not smart enough.
And so she must win back her old life from this creature who wants to steal her soul....
Maybe that's the problem I have with the book. It seems to me that Coraline has it much too easy. I mean, going up against the Other-mother is no walk in the park, but I never got the feeling that she was in any real danger during the book. I knew, from the start, that she was capable of getting herself through intact. Whereas, to return to the comparison with The Thief of Always, there were many points in that book where I wasn't sure how young Harvey Swick was going to get himself out of the mess he'd made. He was a boy full of weaknesses - pride, rebellion and fear - whereas Coraline was just.... bored.
I imagine there are those who would gasp that I would criticize a work by Our Beloved Neil, but if I learned one thing back when I used to be a writer, it was this - honest criticism is worth a thousand times more than automatic praises.
Not like he'll be reading this or anything.......less
Coraline 
