angel011's Full Review: Neil Gaiman and Raquel Vazquez Ramil - Coraline
I'm not the fan type; if I was, though, I'd definitely be a huge fan of Neil Gaiman. I have yet to read a book of his I don't like. Coraline is no exception to that rule.
Gaiman said that Coraline is meant to be an adventure book for children, but to give nightmares to adults. I'd say he was successful in both; being as immature as I am, though, it was a wonderful adventure book for me - and I happen to know some adults found it to be pretty creepy.
The Plot
Coraline is a young girl; her age is never mentioned, but I think she's about 10. She just moved in into a new house with her parents. They don't own the whole house, just an apartment, and their neighbors are a bit weird. There are two aged sisters, who used to be theatre actresses, and who own several dogs. There's a strange old man in the attic, too, a man who claims to train a band of mice. And there's a black cat moving around, often watching Coraline, but never playing with her.
Coraline's parents are always busy; they work from home, and spend most time in front of their computers. So Coraline is mostly ignored - her new neighbours can't even remember her name, and keep calling her "Carolina". While bored during a rainy day, Coraline investigates her new home, and discovers a locked door. She asks her mother about it, to learn that the door leads nowhere - that is, it leads only to a brick wall. Her mother explains to her that there's another apartment in the house, an empty one, which used to be one with their own apartment. However, such a big place proved impossible to sell, so it was separated into two. Later, she gets a protection from the actress sisters, and, through the old man, a warning from the mice: leave the door alone. Not knowing why she would do that, and not truly believing into mice musicians, she shrugs the warning off. The door leads nowhere, anyway.
One day, however, when Coraline opens that door again, a passage appears. Being a curious child, she follows it, to discover it leads to a duplicate of her own building. Everything is duplicated - there are duplicates of the actresses, who perform all the time and are watched by their dogs, there are duplicates of the mice band (except they're rats here, and very mean), there are even duplicates of her own parents. Those parents, however, don't ignore her at all: they are willing to play with her, and her "second mom" is an excellent cook. Coraline's other room is full of somewhat scary, but certainly interesting toys. And the black cat talks, and is very smart, though somewhat vain.
As interesting as her "other home" is, it's a bit creepy. Her "other parents" want to keep her forever, and to change her in a scary way (I'm not telling details!), so Coraline escapes and gets back to her true home.
She's soon to find out that her true parents are being kept prisoners in that creepy other house, together with the souls of three long lost children (one of the children has wings), and that she's the only one who can free them. She's not alone in this, though - she still has the protection from the sisters, and the cat proves to be a loyal and trustworthy friend. Still, Coraline's task is not an easy one, and she's going to need all the courage and wits she has - and perhaps even that won't be enough. Can she make it? Read the book and find out!
What I Loved About This Book
First of all, the main character. Coraline is intelligent, curious and brave. She's not a perfect poster child - she seems very real, as an extremely likable neighbor kid. Please don't think that, because the main character is a girl, this book is for girls only; it's an adventure book, after all, and since Coraline is not passive and doesn't wait to be rescued, she's a kind of girl many boys would like to play with (you can easily imagine her playing baseball and being very good in it). Her reasoning is wonderful, that of a curious and intelligent child - for example, she's told not to go near the well in the backyard, because it's very deep and therefore dangerous, and she goes to check out where exactly the well is, so she'd know precisely which part of the backyard to stay away from.
The cat is also wonderful, intelligent and witty and really helpful. All right, I adore cats (and it seems Gaiman likes them a lot, too), but this one truly is likable.
Although the book is short (less than 200 pages), all the characters are well fleshed out - in a few words, we are told everything we really need to know about them.
The writing is Gaiman's standard - intelligent, amusing, and without unnecessary details. The book is told in third person, but mostly from Coraline's humorous point of view.
Coraline is not openly educational, but it does, unobtrusively, teach kiddies a lot: about the value of courage and friendship, and also about the value of communication - Coraline doesn't like the fact that her neighbors can't remember her name, but she never even asks for the name of the "crazy old man from the attic" (and later feels sorry for that, because he has such an interesting name, Mr. Bobo).
Another thing I just loved about this short book is that there are so many other books for children in it: I recognized bits of Alice in Wonderland, Ozma of Oz, Chronicles of Narnia, Clive Barker's The Thief of Always: A Fable... There may be others I can't remember at the moment. Don't take me wrong: this is not a plagiarism; you just get reminded, from time to time, of books you loved as a kid.
Recommended...
I'd recommend Coraline to all the kids (age 7+, maybe even 6) who have any liking for a bit scary tale; and also to all the adults who like scary tales, or wish to be reminded of wonderful books for children, or like intelligent, humorous, elegant writing, or interesting, well fleshed-out characters, or any combination of the above.
The Write/Off
This review is a part of sleeper54's Halloween Write/Off. To see the list of all the participants, please click here.
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