Neil Gaiman – The Sleeper and The Spindle. Illustrated by Chris Riddell

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Book Review, Children's Book Review, Chris Riddell, Fantasy Fiction, Neil Gaiman, The Sleeper and The Spindle

Fairy-tale mash-up bon-bon

I hesitated a lot about reviewing this here, as it only just makes my 4 star minimum, rounded up from 3 1/2 for the real book only (and a generous 1 star for the Kindle or ebook version). Do NOT get this as an download for a dedicated ereader

Chris Riddell’s illustrations are at least 50% of the delight of this, you will rue the day if you do eread. (I did, and I do) Secondly, this is not really for children – at least not very young ones, its a little too sophisticated and unsettling. I think a child should probably have a 2 digit birthday before embarking. And it may be particularly welcomed by girls due to the strong central character, who is a queen, not a princess and boldly goes where princes fear to tread!

Neil Gaiman’s The Sleeper and The Spindle, is a kind of mash-up hybrid of Snow White and The Seven Dwarves (except that austerity has obviously hit fairy-land too, as we are down to only 3) and The Sleeping Beauty – though there are sly little nods to several other fairy tales which creep in as well – it’s a bit like `spot the fairy celebrity!’ and I won’t reveal them because it would spoil a reader’s enjoyment and `aha’! moments

Part of the delight of an earlier Gaiman novel, The Graveyard Book (which I have in paper version) was Riddell’s illustrations, so I was expecting good things with this one. Sometimes illustrations fare reasonably well in the ereader format, but this is not the case here, as Riddell’s style is so full of fine details, which can’t really be seen properly, as if you try to zoom in, to get detail, you then lose the whole. This story (it is a mere 72 pages long, with several pages of illustrations) though full of some lovely little twists and spooky strangenesses, not to mention redundancies of princes, who needs them! – is a moderately long short story, a mere mouthful of a read. It seems overpriced on eReader, purely because those lovely illustrations, black, white, gold, which you can see on the Look Inside, don’t translate into the dedicated eRead format.

Chris Riddell

Those who are happy to read on other devices, to get colour, and are not bothered by reading on traditional screens, could try a download sample and see if it works for you

The story on its own is probably a little slight; unillustrated, I’d probably have felt a little cheated and wished that Gaiman had published several different shortish fairy tale mash-ups in one volume.

It’s not in the same league, illustration or story-wise with Gaiman’s The Truth Is A Cave In The Black Mountains which was beautifully illustrated by Eddie Campbell, and won a ringing 5 star from me (in real book version) but that was because the illustrations were in full and luscious colour, and far more comprehensively integrated with the text.

Neil Gaiman

This story has a more technical mix of horror and humour, but is inventive, as Gaiman reliably is

I believe it may ONLY be available on eRead in the States at the moment, with wood book becoming available in September. Wait, Wait, WAIT!

The Sleeper and The Spindle Amazon UK
The Sleeper and The Spindle Amazon USA

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Neil Gaiman (author) + Eddie Campbell (illustrator) – The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains

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Artwork, Book Review, Eddie Campbell, Folk Tales, Graphic Novel, Illustrated Book, Neil Gaiman, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains

Fireside dark storytelling rendered even more magical

I am old now, or at least, I am no longer young, and everything I see reminds me of something else I’ve seen, such that I see nothing for the first time. A bonny girl, her head fiery-red, reminds me only of another hundred such lasses, and their mothers, and what they were as they grew, and what they looked like when they died. It is the curse of age, that all things are reflections of other things

Fabulous weaver of weird and wonderful stories for adults and children Neil Gaiman wrote this short story/novella The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, which was published in a collection of creepy dark stories: Stories: All New Tales, by Headline, back in 2010.

Then this story by Gaiman developed another life, when he was invited to read his story aloud, and with projected artwork by Eddie Campbell, with a musical underscore by FourPlay String Quartet at the Graphic Festival at Sydney Opera House.

Neil Gaiman reading, Eddie Campbell’s images, and underscoring by FourPlay, Sydney Opera House 2010 excerpt starts at 2.44 and runs to 4.10

Now Headline have reduced the experience back down to the individual reading experience – a book, a story on the page, that artwork, condensed into a wonderful weaving of seductive and dark words, sensuous and sometimes scary images, and the tactile experience of silky, glossy pages, hardcover, slightly textured titling. The book as craft, art, and beautiful object as well as wondrous words and a story like some well-honed myth, handed down through generations.

This is a journey through the Highlands, a journey made by two stern men, both with hidden secrets. The un-named narrator is a small fierce man. His companion, Calum MacInnes, is a tall, gaunt one. And there appears to be distrust of the other, from both sides, as they set out to find hidden gold which may be cursed

Artist Eddie Campbell’s artworks are gorgeous, and varied in style, ranging from graphic, solid broad-brush stroked figures which are almost cartoon in simplicity, to some lovely part-shaded, part outline, suggestions of shapes, which appear to flicker out from misty, pastel backgrounds. I particularly like the fact that the textured background Campbell must originally have used is visible, a wash across all pages, so that the use of colour is subtle and varied.

This is really not a book to get on ereader – the subtlety of texture, the vibrancy of colour and shape need to be appreciated in the larger size of a book’s pages.

I was extremely fortunate to be offered this by Headline, as a review copy.

My only regret is that I missed knowing about this book till a few days after Neil Gaiman, Eddie Campbell and Foursquare repeated the performed event of the story. Seeing these illustrations stage sized, having the author read his tale aloud and with the underscore, sitting rapt with others whilst this played out, must have been a magnificent occasion

The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains Amazon UK
The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains Amazon USA

And, of course, I must once again give hearty thanks to fellow blogger, friend,and fellow Amazon reviewer Fiction Fan, who is also at times my crossed books at dawn duelling partner, when one of us fervently recommends a book to the other which makes the other react with the sort of enthusiasm normally reserved for a festering swarm of fruit flies on a rotting pineapple. (I’ve resisted the urge to use media here, and will leave it to your fertile imaginations)

However she absolutely came up trumps for me with this one, urgently contacting me to tell me that I would yearn and lust for this, and that ARCS were available She was SO right – and you should also check out her magnificent review, chock full of those marvellous illustrations, and other quotes Fiction Fan’s review of this

The Moth – 50 Extraordinary True Stories – edited by Catherine Burns

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Book Review, Catherine Burns, Neil Gaiman, Performance, The Moth, True Stories

The patterns of story making; the connection of a listening audience

I can quote no better description of The Moth than Neil Gaiman’s introduction to these performed narrations

The Moth connects us, as humans. Because we all have stories. Or perhaps, because we are, as humans, already an assemblage of stories. And the gulf that exists between us as people is that when we look at each other we might see faces, skin colour, gender, race, or attitudes, but we don’t see, we can’t see, the stories. And once we hear each other’s stories we realise that the things we see as dividing us are, all too often, illusions, falsehoods: that the walls between us are in truth no thicker than scenery

The Moth, an American phenomenon – but, o blessed be, due to arrive in the UK this year, is a collection of true story tellings by hundreds of people, which later became broadcast on radio, and has here been collected into a book of 50 of them. Some of the contributors are already in the public eye, as writers, performers, luminaries of one kind or another. But some of them are ‘just ordinary people with extraordinary, ordinary lives. I must admit it was these I found more fascinating.

Inevitably, in appearing ‘in public’ we all, to a greater or lesser extent assume a polished persona. And those most used to this will have a slicker and more professional persona to more easily assume. Sure, each storyteller gets helped, directed, coached to an extent in delivering their story with spellbind and style, but those who do this with less frequency are more likely to let us see the raw of them.

This is a most interesting book of events and lives and viewpoints to read, but I found myself aching for what I could not have – the live presence of these storytellers, their voices, speech patterns, gestures, – to experience the narration in the presence of other listeners.

Photographs by Michael Falco for The New York Times, 2009 Moth Event
at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe

Reading is primarily a solitary, interior experience – but this sort of storytelling needs the audience and the storyteller to be wrapped together.

I assume this book will introduce those unfamiliar with ‘The Moth – This Is A True Story’ to the concept itself, and create an audience for the live experience.

Make no mistake, these are fascinating and enjoyable, moving and amusing. Live, they must be mesmeric, sensational, cohesive and exhilarating to hear.

As the Moth Editor and Artistic Director, Catherine Burns, reminds us

As a society, we have forgotten how to listen deeply. Each Moth evening is a chance to practice listening, to find connection with your neighbours. And while that intimacy might feel terrifying at first, it’s vital. It’s what will save us

I received this as a review copy from Amazon Vine UK

The Moth Amazon UK
The Moth Amazon USA

Neil Gaiman – American Gods

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American Gods, Book Review, Fantasy Fiction, Myths and Legends, Neil Gaiman

Rambling, chaotic, wild, confused – and wondrous

This republished version of Neil Gaiman’s novel from 2001 is like a director’s cut of a movie. Originally differently edited, Gaiman here releases the book he originally wrote, more or less.

It is one of those shambling, rambling, picaresque Don Quixote type tall tales – except the landscape is remarkably dark, gothic, terrifying and bloody, as well as quirky, inventive and playful.

A mysterious man, Shadow, whose rather mythic identity will eventually be revealed is released from his prison sentence early. And from then on, things go abysmally wrong. The symbolically named Shadow, who indeed, always seems to be in someone’s, stumbles into a complex ancient battleground of mankind’s yearning dreams, of the stories we told ourselves of gods and heroes, past and present, of what we worshipped and adored.

Religions are by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you – even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business or marriage thrives, prospers and triumphs over all opposition

Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world

Gaiman peoples America with the various gods brought from various parts of the globe, by those who landed on her shores, from history and from prehistory. Bellicose Norse Gods rub shoulders with matriarchal pagans from Africa, Egyptian animal headed gods accompany leprechauns and pixies. Savage humour and horrific zombies party together. Orpheus makes a different kind of journey into a different kind of Hades, and Eurydice is far from a pretty sight.

Four sons of Horus, Wiki Commons

Ancient gods like these have been forgotten, but linger on, and modern America worships new myths, creates new creatures of power – mass media, technology – paler but no less violent gods, and as demanding of human sacrifice.

My people figured that maybe there’s something at the back of it all, a creator, a great spirit, and so we say thank you to it, because its always good to say thank you. But we never built churches. We didn’t need to. The land was the church. The land was the religion. The land was older and wiser than the people who walked on it.

I’m not absolutely certain (not having read the original) whether the ‘writer’s cut’ improves the no doubt rather less rambling version of 10 years ago. There were times, sure, when i felt – oh just get ON with the narrative and stop going round and round, and then another revelation would strike.

Flabby it may be at times, not, I think, anywhere near as sure and crafted as Gaiman’s latest,The Ocean at the End of the Lane but still, here is a writer who is populist, hugely inventive and with such brilliant imagination and generosity in the telling of tales, that occasional overindulgence must be accepted

Oh, and this one is most definitely NOT a children’s book – some of the sex and violence is very dark indeed

American Gods Amazon UK
American Gods Amazon USA

Neil Gaiman – The Graveyard Book

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Book Review, Children's Book Review, Chris Riddell, Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

Being Human for 10-12s. And for those much older who stay in touch with their inner 10-12s!

Gaiman is a wonderfully imaginative writer, full of dark flair. The premise in this book, has, through nefarious means, a young child losing his family. He is reared by a motley collections of ghosts who live by their graves in the local graveyard. There’s a whole collection of ….entities…who inhabit the world, our ordinary, living reality, and, various representative of other kinds of existence.

There’s a lot of humour in the book, quite a lot of sly education – the young reader will pick up snippets about history, medicine, literature, politics etc from the encounters the young hero makes. There’s also some delicate handling of deeper matter – hints at what lies just over the border of adolescence, also bullying, revenge, death and loss.

Riddell

And, of course, there are the wonderful illustrations by Chris Riddell. Whatever the charms this book may have as an audio book, losing these beautiful illustrations at pertinent points of the story would be a huge, huge loss

Gaiman

Sadly (to my eyes) the American version uses a different illustrator, whose work appears to be blockier, heavier, cruder, and done with broad brush strokes, rather than the intricacy and fine detail which Riddell’s work, above, illustrates.

I guess Kindle readers won’t have a choice as downloads will depend on location, but I know I’d be prepared to scour the UK site for a paper copy of Riddell, if i had a choice – see the difference in the styles, with Dave McKean’s version below

Oh – and for those who chance upon this who don’t live in the UK – Being Human was a blackly comedic BBC series, involving a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost who set up house together and live within our ordinary society – so ordinary that the werewolf and the vampire in the first series work as hospital porters!

I personally lost interest after 3 of the 4 major characters left after the third series; it was a surprisingly good series, with excellent scripts and performers, and gained a cult following from all sorts of people, not just its target audience of young adults or late teens.  There was a later North American version of the series.

The Graveyard Book Amazon UK
The Graveyard Book Amazon USA

Neil Gaiman – The Ocean At The End Of The Lane

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Adult Faerie Tale, Book Review, Myths and Legends, Neil Gaiman, The Ocean At The End Of The Lane

Deep, Deeper, Deepest – oh why did this have to end!

Neil Gaiman has written a marvellous book here, poised beautifully between literary fiction, fantasy and horror, and adult (or child) fairy story

The central character, a man in middle age, with the disappointments of adult life upon him, turns down memory lane, when the death of a parent and the funeral gathering will unite him with the years passed. A failed marriage, work, creativity and the dreams of youth not having quite turned out in the way the younger man or boy might have wished he physically revisits where he once lived, as a seven year old boy, and recounts and remembers what the adult man has forgotten.

What makes this different from other ‘revisit childhood’ books is that the revisited land is large with powerful myths, and presided over by 3 potent female figures who live by ‘the ocean at the end of the lane’ The 3 powerful women a grandmother, a mother and an 11 year old (crone, mother, maiden)are constantly reminding this reader of other pagan and indeed religious threes – a matriachy of power and goodness to rival patriarchal religion, – including a willing sacrifice – the three Fates of Greek mythology, even as they appear to be initially easily dismissed perhaps as the three witches.

Goya : The Fates

Gaiman narrates a brilliant story – more than a battle between good and ill (is it really good to have all desires met – even the desire to be happy?) but under the tight and page turning narrative drive, the fine writing, the believable characters and relationships, philosophical and psychological insights are placed for the reader to chew on.

Its certainly a book which might be enjoyed by a child, even read to a child, especially as the central character is a child, but it reaches, I think, to the wisdom within a child, and to the child within an adult:

As Gaiman has his central character say:

I liked myths. They weren’t adult stories and they weren’t children’s stories. They were better than that. They just were.

I also liked the absolute truth (so it seems to me) of this:

Grown-ups don’t look like grown-ups on the inside. Outside, they’re big and thoughtless and they always know what they’re doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. like they did when they were your age. The truth is, there aren’t any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.

And, if you don’t like that sort of psychology, what about the plunges into transcendental experience – perhaps the experience much fine poetry and music takes us towards:

In those dreams I spoke that language too, the first language, and i had dominion over the nature of all that was real. In my dream, it was the tongue of what is, and anything spoken in it becomes real,, because nothing said in that language can be a lie. it is the most basic building block of everything.

As adults, we have (in the main) forgotten the power of words, of the naming of things, of how potent the dominion of naming and language must have been to our species. And why (some of us) venerate poets, who give us back that place

Ailurophiles will appreciate the central part cats play in this book!

The Ocean At The End Of The Lane Amazon UK
The Ocean At The End Of The Lane Amazon USA