Fragile Things

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Strange Little Girls– twelve very short stories to accompany Tori Amos's CD Strange Little Girls (3 stars) I think…that I would rather recollect a life misspent on fragile things than spent avoiding moral debt. The words turned up in a dream and I wrote them down upon waking, uncertain what they meant or to whom they applied.

And Gaiman’s stories are full of possibilities. They are all so random and based upon chance encounters, and that’s what drives them forward: I just didn’t know what to expect from story to story. A man can walk into a diner and bump into a man he hasn’t seen for ten years who has a very dark and twisted tale to share. A boy can walk down the street and see a ghost in the lamplight or another can wake up and find himself in hell. There’s just no filter to the possibilities. They can go anywhere and be anything So the book that has been sold to us feels like a very different thing to the one I read. I enjoyed it, but I don’t think it quite embodies the model awkwardly proposed. I had very similar feelings when I read Gaiman’s more recent collection Trigger Warning. The stories were quite good, but very few had anything to do with the idea of a “trigger” that sets the story in motion and reveals the horror lurking in wait. They were just stories. However, flaws aside, American Gods still comes out on top thanks to its big ideas and its setting. It feels a little mean putting this at the bottom but, honestly, Neil Gaiman has never written a flat-out bad book. I also read this book at the age of 23, knowing that the target demographic is very young children. My Life" is a poem about a person whose life is a sequence of bizarre events like those found in the Weekly World News.

A mysterious circus terrifies an audience for one extraordinary performance before disappearing into the night, taking one of the spectators along with it.

The Problem of Susan" – written for the anthology Flights by Al Sarrantonio, written in response to the character Susan in Narnia American Godsalso has a truly masterful central concept. Gods need people to invent them, worship them, and dedicate their lives to them. Without people, gods disappear. The Hidden Chamber" (3 stars)- I think I just dislike poems. I recall from Stephen King's latest he had some in there and I just hard cringed at them. Diseasemaker's Croup" describes a fake condition in which a person is compelled to make up fake conditions.

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So in terms of entertainment value (and the ability to keep things fresh and interesting across pieces) this scores very highly. No two stories are the same and none really follow a particular pattern or system. The idea of grouping them under a title seems a little absurd. A few of them, though, did feel like they belonged in the same world as American Gods. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if he wrote some of them at the same time as working on his magnum-opus; there are certainly parallels. Think of it as a month with Scheharazade . . . No Gaiman fan can be without [ Fragile Things] . . . If you’ve never encountered Gaiman’s unique voice before, this volume is an excellent introduction, with easily digestible stories that can be devoured in one sitting. Still, you may find yourself gorging at this narrative feast, not stopping until you’ve read two or three or even half a dozen at a time. St. Louis Post-Dispatch The Problem of Susan - 3/5 - whatever happened to Susan from the Narnia books (WARNING: explicit, not for children)

Feeders and Eaters" – based on a nightmare of Neil Gaiman's, it first took the form of a comic and later the outline for a pornographic horror film Feeders and Eaters – two old acquaintances are reunited and one of them is so dramatically altered. This is the story about what happened to him. Scary, very scary! (3 stars) I'm counting this in for Award Winning Challenge as a couple of the stories in this collection are award winners or mentions.Charming, at times creepy, and good fun . . .[W]ell-worth adding to any collection; highly recommended." —LibraryJournal There were around 20-23 short stories/poems and I liked just two or three of them. "Goliath" was my favourite. Reality, however, is not story-shaped, and the eruptions of the odd into our lives are not story-shaped either. They do not end in entirely satisfactory ways. Recounting the strange is like telling one's dreams: one can communicate the events of a dream but not the emotional content, the way that a dream can color one's entire day. I love Neil Gaiman. He is brilliant, imaginative, and abso- friggin-lutely weird, and I love him for it. And this book of short stories and prose, Fragile Things, is by far my most favorite compendium of his.