Coraline

Done

Amazon

 ... and I was dozing off by 10:15. That's unheard of in this household, so rare and shocking, it borders on crazy talk, but there it is.

Coraline is another novella, actually shorter in length than Bree Tanner, but Neil Gaiman, the author, is a master storyteller. This is my third of his that I've read, and, honestly, of the three, my least favorite. Not that it's bad, by any stretch of the imagination, just not my favorite.

The story is very simple, which it has to be to be satisfying in 162 pages, and I would like to sum it up without spoiling it for anyone in this way: it's the story of a nightmare -- only the author never resorts to the "and then she woke up" device. It's simply a creepy little story that any of us could imagine we've dreamed at some point in our lives, laid it out in story form.

I'd also like to add, partly in defense of my criticism of Bree Tanner that the characters lacked depth, that Coraline's characters were real people. As a matter of fact, I related to the mother and father a little too well, and Coraline was a perfectly normal little girl, containing both virtues and vices, as well as this pleasant little thing we call a personality. She was even a little on the obnoxious side, but she's a little girl. We were all a little on the obnoxious side as children.

All in all, I did like Coraline. I hesitate to rate it now because I feel quite strongly that I'm going to need to reread it, maybe after the New Year, just to see if some of the writing doesn't itch at me like it did upon first reading, but I'm going to pop a 4 out of 5 on it for now, and recommend it as a quick read.

...Oh, and to those who wonder *coughcoughBethandJoAnncoughcough* I did not sit on my backside all day with my nose in a book, promise.

Of course, both books I read were tiny, so there is that. ;-)