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Book Review: Coraline (Gaiman)

I had one of those moments where I realized the ridiculousness of keeping this weblog.

I was sitting, listening to Neil Gaiman read his new book Coraline, wondering "When I write this up for my weblog, should I label it as a Book Review or an Event Report or make two separate entries or what?"

In the effort to make the review more interesting, it is all going in here.

I enjoyed the book. It is a fairly typical fairy tale, although it is set in a contemporary environment and it features a really strong female protagonist. I think Coraline's character effectively captured the personality of a smart child, which is a not insignificant task. It was unfortuante the plot itself was a little dull, but the execution was really nice, with lots of clever and entertaining twists throughout. The buildup to the first climax was a little predictable, but I don't think it can be a real fairy tale if it doesn't have some predictability. I'm not sure the second climax was really needed, but I'll have to try reading it myself to see if I change my mind. The beginning half had a couple of slow spots, although again, I can't tell what was due to the reading environment and what was actually the book, although I suspect this may have been the book since the second half kept me entertained throughout. There were only two spots where I was distracted by the writing - a reference to Coraline's mom as "Mrs. Jones" seemed out of lace coming for the first and only time at the end, and the narrator explaining things about the relative speed of rats and girls to the reader. The explanation was very humorous, but it seemed a change in narration style which was a little strange for me. Otherwise, I liked it, and I think the Coraline character was someone I would love for more children to identify with.

Mr. Gaiman's reading was also very entertaining. He opened with a little update that Henry Selick would direct the movie version of Coraline and it would cast Michelle Pfeiffer as the Mom. Then he read the first half of the novel, we took a break for cookies and water, and then he finished reading the novel. All told, it took about 4 hours to read the book, which is a lot to sit through, but the audience stayed with it the whole time, I think. Some of us had to fight the sleep urge that has been conditioned in to us from bedtime stories in our youth (and the occasional lucky nights as adults) but the story was exciting enough that it wasn't much of a problem once things got going.

So, it was very entertaining, both performance-wise and book-wise. I think it was more entertaining than the usual brief reading/Q&A session/signing evening, so I am glad he chose this arrangement and that Cody's Books did a fine job arranging it. And I was happy to have someone to go with that also enjoyed it.