Never mind all that, It's great reading all the same. Maybe this accounts for the occasional niggling doubt, the feeling that Gaiman only talks the talk and he actually has no real affinity with the arcane or esoteric. We cannot relate to him if he is forever having a power lunch with some celebrity.Also it breaks the spell and does indeed turn it to smoke!Īlso, I cannot help feeling that Gaiman does not really believe in magic, only literary magic- I on the other hand, do believe in the many dimensions and facets of existence. I really like Neil Gaiman, but I do wish he would stop saying things 'like my old mate Tori Amos said'. One part I really loved was the versiform stories, which are chilling and original. I find Gaiman almost the reverse, possibly slightly misogynistic, his female characters tend to be Lamia or vampires- sexualised in the extreme. Gaiman is more amiable than Carter and so he somehow gets away with it, Carter's florid style is cooled down in Gaiman to a more believable eloquence, he speaks in common parlance, whereas Carter spoke the uncommon.Īlso Carter had a drum she banged, which was that of a particular brand of feminism, intellectual and incisive and sure as a rapier. I felt the influence of Angela Crater, whom Gaiman never acknowledges and yet who must be a primary influence with her dark and macabre retellings of classic fairy stories. There is a also strong pornographic element to some of the stories, so be warned if you are a gentle or prim soul. However, grotesquerie is par for the course on Gaiman as in other contemporary authors. he does seem to have fixation with oral sex, masturbation and the perverse. I was particularly grossed out by the werewolf in 'Bay Wolf' vomiting up his midnight vulpine snack of child parts and dog's paw, and the vile little Snow White sucking her father dry of blood from every part ( and I mean every) of his body. Many are extremely dark and bordering on the nauseating.
Some are completely brilliant or contain flashes of brilliance. He references so many writers, I became rather dizzy, from Anatole France to Peter Redgrove he leaps to Moorcock and back again to his signature gumshoe style. A curious collection of stories inasmuch as the style is so variable and unilateral only their 'gothickness'.
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