Coraline and Other Stories: The Bloomsbury Phantastics

This is a collection of Neil Gaiman eleven short stories (and one poem) repackaged for the young reader market. The novella 'Coraline' is added to Bloomsbury's earlier Gaiman collection 'M for Magic', while 'M for Magic' was itself a throwing together of disparate tales, some from the adult collection 'Smoke and Mirrors', some from other publications, all deemed suitable to send a chill down pre-teen, teen and, of course, adult readers. So, the moral is if you already have these titles in your library you may want to pass on this 'new' title.

Or then again, you might not. This is a good place to include the almost flawless 'Coraline' together with the other chillers about the fears and bogeys that haunt the childish and not so childish show more imagination, deliciously presented in a volume with pages that are black-edged and including Dave McKean's original nightmarish illustrations for 'Coraline'.

Outstanding are the pieces that bring horror (and sometimes humour) rather too close to home; 'Troll Bridge', 'Don't Ask Jack', 'Chivalry', 'The Price' and 'The Witch's Headstone', whether set in the UK or the States, remind the reader that the veil separating reality and the supernatural may be awfully thin. Less engaging but just as skillfully written are the more alien, fantastic or futuristic stories such as 'How to Sell the Ponti Bridge' and 'Sunbird'; these are more for those who have leanings towards genre fiction, but they are still rooted in a rich Western cultural heritage.

Gaiman is a master at bringing the unexpected to the seemingly banale; don't read this if you don't ever want to have his disturbing visions floating up to your consciousness unbidden.

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A re-read of Coraline. Still a great story. I picked up this edition really to read the short stories taken from M is for Magic, Fragile Things, Smoke and Mirrors, Dark Alchemy, Noisy Outlaws..., and Conjunctions no 39. All guaranteed great stories, possibly reminiscent of Ray Bradbury, as Gaiman is imaginative and has a talent for producing excellent plots, characters, atmospheres, settings and conclusions. The titles are: The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds, Troll Bridge, Don't Ask Jack, How to Sell the Ponti Bridge, October in the Chair, Chivalry, The Price, How to Talk to Girls at Parties, Sunbird, The Witch's Headstone, and Instructions.

Coraline was the longest story in this collection, and the one that I most enjoyed, by far. The final poem hit home too, but the other stories I found a bit forgettable.