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  I can’t help but feel that I’m missing something

  Neil Gaiman was lauded by his contemporaries for “Fragile Things,” his recent collection of “short fictions and wonders”. The critics loved it. Celebrities vied to get their effusive praise plastered across the back cover. Fans waited with baited breath for it to finally hit the shelves... And I can’t help but feel that I’m missing something.

  Having read the synopsis, I gleefully flicked to the first story and awaited the dazzling of my senses and the haunting of my imagination that would move me to the very depths of my soul, which I’d been led to believe would be imminent... Sadly, nothing happened. The first few stories are interesting, but not of the standard a fan of Gaiman’s novels would expect and by the fifth offering I was feeling distinctly nonplussed by the whole affair.

  Many of the stories in this collection are mildly entertaining. And yes, a generous spoonful of the weird has been added to the mix, with an occasional sprinkling of disturbing perversity for flavour, but overall the recipe just doesn’t work.

  As a positive, the poetry is, at times, quite beautiful, and as ever, Gaiman succeeds in making the reader look at things from a slightly different angle – for me “The Chronicles of Narnia” will never be the same again – but, but but...

  The one huge redeeming feature of this collection is the final entry; “The Monarch of the Glen - An American Gods Novella,” in which we are reintroduced to Shadow and shown a little of what happened to him after the great battle at the end of that brilliant novel. This in itself makes the book worth buying, without it the collection is forgettable.

  Neil Gaiman is a fantastic fantasist; his graphic novels, novels and children’s stories have entertained people around the world, but in this case, I’m afraid the final verdict is: Could do better!

  Review by Emily Hirschmann on 14:04, 04 Apr 2008

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