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Loading... Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders (P.S.)by Neil GaimanSeries: American Gods (Short Story - "The Monarch of the Glen")
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. A collection of gothic tales, braided into a reality both exotic and familiar. Neil Gaiman gathers 31 disparate stories, dramas, poems and songs into this one jewel of a book. Written with all of Gaiman's usual grace, each fiction flows in his signature poetic style with moods ranging from world weary to sinister. A beauty. (  ) aleahmarie | Mar 13, 2010 |  Another great collection of short stories from Neil Gaiman. I was a bit underwhelmed by "The Problem with Susan," possibly just because I've heard it praised so highly, but even average Gaiman is beautifully crafted. (  )1  EstelleChauvelin | Mar 2, 2010 | "I like things to be story-shaped."So says the narrator of The Flints of Memory Lane, one of the stories in this collection. I agree wholeheartedly.Which is why I'm only giving this a 3-star rating. Not because the writing is poor, but because so few of these stories are actually, well, story-shaped. Also, it's such a mix of genres, not all of which I enjoy... My favorite parts of this collection are the Introduction (in which Gaiman explains the genesis of each story/poem/whatnot) and the author interview at the end, in which he says: "I've never written a horror novel, and one reason I've never written a horror novel is I don't think I'd want to live in that place for eighteen months or two years. But I'm perfectly happy to visit for a weekend or a couple of weeks and get absolutely creepy and dark and nasty and strange in a way that I wouldn't want to be long-term."I'm not a fan of horror, so maybe I should stick to his novels. (  )1 catalogthis | Nov 24, 2009 | I decided to read something serious by Gaiman, and picked up this collection of short stories. They were all very good, but there was something will-o'-the-wisp-y about them. In the Introduction, he mentions that he'd originally meant to write a collection of stories with unreliable narrators; that plan fell by the wayside, but there's still often a feeling that what's really happening may not be quite what you think it is. The title is very apt. All these stories are fragile little soap bubbles; if you poke them too hard, they'll break. I don't know if you'd call it favorite, but the story that stood out the most to me was "Sunbird," which Gaiman wrote in the style of R.A. Lafferty as a birthday present for his daughter Holly. I have been a Lafferty fan since college, I absolutely adore his unique sideways look at reality. I kept thinking as I read "Sunbird" that it had a Lafferty-ish feel, although it never quite managed the giddy spark of wonder that Lafferty often achieved. Anyway, after I finished Neil's story, I had to go dig up my yellowed copy of New Dimensions III and re-read my all-time favorite Lafferty story, "Days of Grass, Days of Straw." (  ) codyne | Nov 19, 2009 | Neil Gaiman is known to pen imaginative stories with intriguing characters. His anthology "Fragile Things" delivers both, but the collected short stories and poems vary in quality as much as subject matter. Anthologies tend to tickle us in different ways, so I'll simply say I enjoyed "A Study in Emerald," "October in the Chair," and "The Monarch of the Glen" (featuring Shadow from "American Gods"). ( ) fujiwark | Nov 8, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0060515228, Hardcover)A mysterious circus terrifies an audience for one extraordinary performance before disappearing into the night, taking one of the spectators along with it . . .In a novella set two years after the events of American Gods, Shadow pays a visit to an ancient Scottish mansion, and finds himself trapped in a game of murder and monsters . . . In a Hugo Award-winning short story set in a strangely altered Victorian England, the great detective Sherlock Holmes must solve a most unsettling royal murder . . . Two teenage boys crash a party and meet the girls of their dreams—and nightmares . . . In a Locus Award-winning tale, the members of an excusive epicurean club lament that they've eaten everything that can be eaten, with the exception of a legendary, rare, and exceedingly dangerous Egyptian bird . . . Such marvelous creations and more—including a short story set in the world of The Matrix, and others set in the worlds of gothic fiction and children's fiction—can be found in this extraordinary collection, which showcases Gaiman's storytelling brilliance as well as his terrifyingly entertaining dark sense of humor. By turns delightful, disturbing, and diverting, Fragile Things is a gift of literary enchantment from one of the most unique writers of our time. (retrieved from Amazon Tue, 05 Jan 2010 13:35:05 -0500) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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