Gaiman excerpt, a four-word review

Neil Gaiman is now big enough to make the cover of Poets and Writers, see?


(Blew up a thumbnail.)

This is important because P&W rarely deals with genre fiction. I squeezed in a profile of Kelly Link and Gavin Grant some years ago, but other than that, it's rare and always along the lines of a literary fiction writer dabbling with fantastical or crime elements. Anyway, that's a big deal. Also, in addition to the brief seven-question interview, there is an excerpt from Gaiman's new book The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Now we can really see some literary chops, and well-observed character observations from a genre writer, right? The excerpt comes along with a finger-wagging warning from HarperCollins, but surely the first and last lines of the excerpt will count as fair use:

Nobody came to my seventh birthday party.

[Some stuff about cake and mother and a Batman doll and a boxed set of Narnia books, which junior retires to his bedroom to read.]

I liked that. Books were safer than other people anyway.





Oh FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOU! Pander much?