Coraline shouldn’t need any introduction if any of you reading this are cool even a modicum.
The brain baby of Neil Gaiman, renown for his works with Sandman, Stardust, Neverwhere, Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett), and a slew of other great works, Coraline is a web of wonder and fantasy woven into a story that may have been made for children but can definitely be enjoyed by adults. Gaiman has a way with words; as such, there are no age limitations. All you need to enjoy him is an imagination and the ability to read. And to those that lack the latter, I’ll just take this opportunity to ridicule you for your incompetence. Biblio-blunderers.
Our main character is, of course, Coraline: A young girl who is full of imagination and curiousity. Unfortunately, her parents don’t seem to be the source of her inspiration, so it gets frustrating sometimes. We join Coraline and her family as they are moving into a new flat part of a large building separated into three parts. On the top part in the attic is the old man who claims to be training a mouse circus. On the bottom are two washed-up actresses who care for their bedraggled terriers and recount the “old days” when they were well-known and beautiful.
Coraline would rather have little to do with them all, mostly I think because they always seem to mispronounce her name as Caroline, despite how many times she corrects them. Just goes to show that some adults don’t seem to take kids seriously, even if they are smarter than the average child their age. Instead she likes to explore the new territory with a stray black cat, pretending she’s on adventures and discovering new things.
The storyline kicks up when Coraline’s curiousity about the door in the old drawing room that leads to a brick wall grows more and more, with less than feasible answers. What’s behind it? Why does it have to be bricked up? One night she swears she spies a sort of mouse-like creature crawling in the hallway and follows it into the drawing room. It slips under the locked door and doesn’t come back. Odd, considering the brick wall that’s behind it. Determined to find out, the next day she waits for her mother to run out to the store before hijacking the key from it’s hiding place and going into the drawing room.
You know, one of the things in this book that makes you sympathize with Coraline the most is how forgetful and uninvolved her parents are in her life. Oh, sure, they seem to care for her a lot but sometimes they don’t seem to pay much attention to her or her casual observations or want to be just a little different. You’d think they’d want to promote individuality and encourage her imagination and help it grow into something more, but they’re so preoccupied with other things they just don’t seem like key characters in the story. But all of this changes once she enters the drawing room door.
Indeed, Coraline’s whole world is turned upside-down when she enters another realm that is almost exactly like her own, save for a few differences. For instance, all the people including her parents have big black buttons for eyes and seem kind of wispy. Her Other Mother (OM from here on) is very eager to have Coraline stay in this parallel world with her for all eternity, promising her happiness and wonderful foods to eat and a family that loves her and accepts her. The Other Father is still a lot like her real father aside from the eyes, that and he seems deathly afraid of the OM.
Coraline investigates this realm for a moment, encountering singing rats along the way who give some ominous advice. She also watches a performance by the Other Old Ladies who happen to have a theatre in their flat and their audience is filled with talking dogs. Slightly weirded out, Coraline decides to return home for the day, much to the dismay of the OM who is really attached to Coraline. Really attached.
Time doesn’t seem to pass in the Other realm the same way it does in her home realm, for no one seemed to realize she was gone. After some contemplation, and some sleep of course, Coraline decides to head back for curiousities sake and check the place out some more. This proves to be a bad idea.
There is no way I could review this book and successfully express the imagery, philosophies and lessons that Neil Gaiman manages to achieve in his particular type of prose. I’ve re-written this review three times now and I just can’t do it, I can’t do justice to the cleverness of his words and his world.
But I can say these few things: Through some amazing conclusions, philosophical conversation with a cat, and horrifying visuals, the moral of not taking things for granted and appreciating the things that you have is well put across. Coraline is a strong character and very smart for her age, which is great to be able to read in a children’s book because children need to know that even though they are young they can still accomplish great things if they try.
Also, Coraline’s kindness in promising to help the three trapped children in reclaiming their souls and their after-lives is thrilling. She puts herself at risk in order to save the kids that the Other Mother (whom they refer to as the beldam, haha) seemed to have grown tired of and tosses them in a small closet. The rats make occasional appearances to recite sinister poems that may or may not hold some clues for our young adventurer.
After escaping the desperate clutches of the Other Father, who was banished to a basement for consulting with Coraline and was meant to kill her before she could solve the puzzle of her missing parents and the lost souls of the children- Coraline uses her guile to trick the OM and escapes the Other World with everything she was meant to find and more. With a new way to look at the world and a better understanding of her parents, Coraline’s relationship with the world and her parents has improved and she finally is able to rest with a satisfactory smile.
I definitely recommend reading this book to get the full effect of Neil Gaiman’s words coupled with David McKean’s illustrations. Put together, the world created in the pages is so much more than what I’ve offered here; I’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg, really.
It also excites me to say that in cooperation with Henry Selick (the man who directed Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, and then proceeded to rip-off Tim’s style in the production of Monkeybone), an animated movie of Coraline is set out to be released in 3D sometime next year. Read about Neil Gaiman’s first look at the set here, following any of the subsequent links below his post to learn more of it.
