Coraline
Neil Gaimam
Harper Perennial
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Young Coraline's family has just moved into one floor of a run-down old house. The upstairs neighbor claims he's training a mouse circus. The elderly sisters downstairs raise terriers and speak endlessly of their bygone days on the stage. Her parents are wrapped up in their jobs, hardly noticing her coming and going. Left mostly to her own devices, she starts exploring... and finds a peculiar door in the drawing room that leads to a brick wall. One night, she follows a strange shadow to the door, and finds that it now opens onto a hallway leading to another flat just like her own - only not quite. Here, Coraline meets her "Other Mother," a paper-pale woman with black buttons for eyes. She offers the lonely girl all the love and attention that her real parents haven't given her in ages... but at what cost?
REVIEW: This movie formed the basis of the 2009 animated film of the same name. I saw the movie first, and there are significant differences. The overall creepy nature of the Other Mother's world remains the same, as does the independence and courage of the heroine herself. Considering that I find Gaiman a very hit-and-miss author, this one falls in the "hit" category, with the strangeness augmenting the story rather than bogging it down. While I personally preferred the movie, I could still enjoy this book.
No comments:
Post a Comment