Review: Coraline by Neil Gaiman & Illustrated by Chris Riddell

Coraline is a novel that is as delightful as it is scary. Featuring a young protagonist, but with a plot more suitable for readers at the higher end of the age range for middle grade, it tells the story of Coraline, an only child who has recently moved to a new flat with her parents. Both of her parents are busy and the other residents are as old as they are odd, so Coraline finds herself feeling quite lonely. She takes it upon herself to explore the building--a former grand old manor that has been converted into flats. And on the other side of a door she finds two people with big, scary black buttons for eyes who claim to be her "other parents." The other mother wants her to stay there forever, and begins a deadly game where traps are set, and Coraline knows that she must fight to go back home ...

This was a twist, scary gothic novel with a big heart and a hell of a lot of imagination. I enjoyed the sense of not knowing what would happen next, while I wished Coraline all the best as she went about trying to fix the many wrongs created by the other mother. In particular, I enjoyed how Coraline resolved things at the well. The character is portrayed as being clever and independent and possessing a true sense of right and wrong, one that she does not necessarily know that she has at the beginning of the novel. It's also very much a story about loneliness. Coraline is an only child who has just moved to a new home, and is about to start at a new school. Meanwhile, the other mother faces a similar sense of loneliness, through her intense desire for a child and to be well, a part of something, I suppose. The buttons, as well as being scary, point also to her obliviousness to the wrongs of the situation. 

Overall, Coraline well written and an enjoyable read, and one that can very much be enjoyed by readers who are outside of the target audience. (Yes. I am talking to you. You are most definitely not too old, too mature or too sophisticated to read this book. Or if you are, I do not want to know you.)

Highly recommended.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean...
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu...
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A...
Read more