Fragile (complete)

14 January – Started reading Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman. I figure I’ll post reviews as I read the stories and just migrate this post’s post-date each time. That way they’ll all be in the same place. Eventually. :^D

15 January - A new day, a new color, as I continue my story by story review.

17 January - The process continues.

18 January - There's actually a short story in the introduction that's quite nicely done. About an emperor who wanted a map on a scale equal to the territory.

19 January - Pagewise, I seem to be more than halfway through now. Incidentally, the hardcover edition of this book is just beautifully made. The dust jacket is of translucent white paper, so that the designs on the cover proper show through: a butterfly, some snowflakes, and a human heart.

23 January - Bit of a break in this due to various crises over the weekend. Oh, and my mom's birthday, which I didn't mention yet. I made her Devil's Food Cake.

24 January - There's a chance I may finish the book tonight, though the last story is the longest: long enough to be classified as a novella. UPDATE: Finished now. Overall, I recommend the book to anyone who likes Gaiman, or even who likes British humor. No, I didn't like every story, but I liked most of them. And I love Gaiman's writing style.


1. “A Study in Emerald” – Gaiman says that his instructions on this one were to create a world where the creations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.P. Lovecraft could interact. He did it beautifully. It’s one of those stories that’s all the eerier for being almost familiar. It reminded me of some of M. Night Shyamalin’s movies in certain respects. Most especially in that it started something that I would very much like to see continued.

2. “The Fairy Reel” – An odd poem. Bittersweet fluff.

3. “October in the Chair” – A story about stories, sort of. It’s interesting, but I’m not sure what the elaborate set-up added to it. No, that’s not it. The set-up was also interesting. It might help if I knew what October was like in England. Then again, it might not. I suppose it’s Halloweenish. I think my verdict on this one is: “Interesting, but I feel like I’m missing something.”

4. "Hidden Chamber" - A beautifully eerie poem. Take an idea from Stephen King. Muffle it under several layers of cheesecloth and strain it through an elegance filter. Stir gently.

5. "Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire" - This one had me laughing out loud. If you've seen the Monty Python sketch where the literary family is disgusted by their turncoat son who works in a coal mine, the flavor is similar. Essentially, holding a candle up to gothic life and burning the toast in the process.

6. "The Flints of Memory Lane" - All the more interesting for not being story-shaped. (In the intro, Gaiman says that it's a true story, too)

7. "Closing Time" - An interesting ghost story that may or may not have some truth to it, and may or may not be a ghost story. Though the more of these I read, the more I notice Gaiman's penchant for putting stories within stories. Three of the seven thusfar have done so in a very obvious manner. I'm not complaining, exactly, but I am wondering a bit...

8. "Going Wodwo" - Beautiful poem. And what is a wodwo? Apparently it's an archaic form of "woodwose." Incidentally, there's another poem with almost the same title: Wodwo.

9. "Bitter Grounds" - Eerie zombie tale. Finding your place in this world when you have no place. Or maybe going no where and winding up somewhere. It's one of those stories that is interesting and worth reading, but that I find difficult to actually like.

10. "Other People" - Short and...not sweet. 'Round and 'round and back where we began......

11. "Keepsakes and Treasures" - Yikes. I can't think of much else meaningful to say about this one. The POV-character is possibly the most repulsive character I've ever encountered. The story isn't directly about him, but I'm not sure the other characters are any better. Put it this way...I felt mildly sick and a bit dirty after reading it. Well-written, yes. Enjoyable, no.

12. "Good Boys Deserve Favor" - Eh. Maudlin story about a boy and a bass. The instrument, not the fish.

13. "The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch" - Interesting variation on the wandering wish-fulfillers theme.

14. "Strange Little Girls" - 12 vignettes, connected to the Tori Amos CD of the same name (or so it says in the introduction; I don't listen to Tori Amos). Some interesting, some odd, some blah.

15. "Harlequin Valentine" - I like this Valentine story. Though I'm not quite sure why she decided to eat the heart.

16. "Locks" - The tarnish age puts on bedtime stories, and locks.

17. "The Problem of Susan" - A strange sort of anti-tribute to Narnia. Gaiman says that Susan's ultimate fate in the series "disturbed" him, so he decided to write something that was disturbing in a different way.

18. "Instructions" -Nicely whimsical poem, ostensibly instructions for behavior in a fairy tale. Though I have to wonder...what if it's the older princess who's untrustworthy in your particular tale...?

19. "How Do You Think It Feels?" - Hmm. I can relate to some of the emotions in this one, but not to the ending. It's not...satisfying. It would be like Pink Floyd's the Wall, if the Wall never came down and kept trying to rebuild itself. *shrugs* And the numbness never lasts. Never. However much you may think you want it to.

20. "My Life" - Reminds me of Weird Al's Jerry Springer tribute. :^) This bit from the intro caught my attention: "An old friend of mine had just started writing for the Weekly World News, and I'd had much fun making up stories for her to use." You mean, they really are made up? ;^)

21. "Fifteen Painted Cards from a Vampire Tarot" - Vampire vignettes tied into the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck. Interesting musings.

22. "Feeders and Eaters" - In essence, a story about how the British see cats. Not all of them actually in feline form, though. This one is very nicely done. I can see how some seemingly extraneous material is actually quite, quite relevant. And ironic. My only objection is that I don't see cats the way Gaiman does (Terry Pratchett has a similar attitude towards them).

23. "Diseasemaker's Croup" - A disease where people cannot stop making up and talking about imaginary diseases. It's barely coherent in places, nicely implying that the writer himself is a sufferer. Oh, and Gaiman comments that he used a program called "Babble" to produce some of the idiosyncracies.

24. "In the End" - In the Beginning, in reverse.

25. "Goliath" - Gaiman's version of The Matrix, more or less. But more interesting than the movie.

26. "Pages from a Journal Found in a Shoebox Left in a Greyhound Bus Somewhere Between Tulsa, Oklahoma and Louisville, Kentucky" - Whew. The title's almost longer than the story! I like this one. It's a poignant vignette, about searching and hope. Apparently it also ties to a Tori Amos CD that I've never heard of. :^)

27. "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" - Somewhere between amusing and disturbing. A party full of apparent females, who turn out to be from...elsewhere, playing tourist on Earth. I like the portrayal of their culture, as overtly alien but almost familiar.

28. "The Day the Saucers Came" - Amusing little poem. Imagine every end-of-the-world scenario from every disaster movie and myth ever made all happening at once...and being too busy to notice.

29. "Sunbird" - Beautifully whimsical story. Written differently, it might have been a sad tale, but managed not to be. The setting is a club whose goal is to taste everything, no matter how rare, and record the experience. Rarest of the rare? The Sunbird.

30. "Inventing Aladdin" - Poem/story about inventing stories to stay alive, a la Scheherezade. I think the reason I don't like it as well as others is that it was put in poem form but didn't feel like a poem. It felt like a story, broken up randomly so that it looked like a poem. *shrugs*

31. "Monarch of the Glen" - This is the novella. Quick read, though. It features the same unpleasant character as "Keepsakes and Treasures" but, thankfully, not as the POV character. That's reserved for Shadow, who was the main character of American Gods. Very nicely done. Of course, there is the minor issue raised at the end of the novella: Was this actually a good thing that Shadow did? Then again, what else could he have done?