Fragile Things is Frickin' Good

So, I'm not usually a big fan of short stories, but recently I've been reading Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things, a collection of short fiction. Now, I think I've said this before, but I'll say it again: everything Neil Gaiman writes is genius! And Fragile Things is no exception.


It's one of the strangest books I've ever read, but I loved every minute of it. It was just so wonderfully weird. I mean, the only way I can really even explain this book is that it was like taking a walk  through someone else's dreams. It was that surreal. Actually, given the cover art, I think that that is actually quite a good analogy. Whoever designed the cover of this book had a really good idea of what it was about and what it was trying to accomplish. I love how it looks like the contents of his brain is draining out onto the book. It's such a powerful image. Really good writing, I think, should be a walk through the writer's mind, and I think Neil Gaiman accomplished that in speculator form.

Which is not to say that any of these stories were particularly realistic. It's a little difficult to summarize what Fragile Things is about, since it was a book of short stories, but suffice it to say that there were vampires and zombies and sabor tooth tigers and other sorts of monsters that there aren't words for. But it's so much more than that; Fragile Things has certainly earned it's title 'Short Fictions and Wonders', because really, there's no other way to describe it. Wonders is a very apt word.

One story in this book really stuck out to me. It was called 'October in the Chair'. Basically, it just involved the twelve months sitting around a camp fire, telling stories to each other. It's October's turn to tell a story, so he tells about a little boy who meets a ghost boy called Dearly (as in Dearly Beloved) and becomes friends with him. Neil Gaiman called the story a "dry run for The Graveyard Book" (which if you haven't read, you should).  It's such a simple but powerful idea, and a great opportunity for a frame story. I am simply in awe of Neil Gaiman's craft in this story. In roughly ten pages he assigns personalities and characteristics to all of the months and still has time to fit in a few stories.

Ultimately these are the characteristics that characterize all of Neil Gaiman's writings, he knows what he is trying to say and he says it in very few words. As someone who has had to read Tolstoy, let me tell you that that is a philosophy I can get behind.

Just readin'