Coraline
by Neil Gaiman
The day after they moved in, Coraline went exploring….
In Coraline’s family’s new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close. The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own. Only it’s different. At first, things seem marvelous in the other flat. The food is better. The toy box is filled with wind-up angels that flutter around the bedroom, books whose pictures writhe and crawl and shimmer, little dinosaur skulls that chatter their teeth. But there’s another mother, and another father, and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go. Other children are trapped there as well, lost souls behind the mirrors. Coraline is their only hope of rescue. She will have to fight with all her wits and all the tools she can find if she is to save the lost children, her ordinary life, and herself.
Coraline has been on my TBR for over ten years—almost half my life. I watched the movie when in came out in 2009 and immediately knew that I needed to read the book, figuring it would be even better. Over the last eleven years, I’ve looked forward to reading the book and at long last, I finally have.
I thought I would really love Coraline, however I only really liked it. I had hoped to love this little book, but I absolutely think seeing the movie first impacted my ability to enjoy the book for what it is. I couldn’t help but compare it to the Tim Burton masterpiece of a movie and I ended up feeling that the book, while still enjoyable, fell a bit flat. It felt like a thinner version of events than what I remembered from the movie, whereas I went into the book expecting more detail and more oddities that didn’t make the movie. My first clue that it wasn’t going to be as I’d expected should’ve been the size. I didn’t realize until the book was right in front of me just how short the story is. Of course, Coraline is for children but I’d thought it’d be closer to 300 pages rather than 160–it’s actually a novella. Perhaps if I’d taken the size into account, I would’ve adjusted my expectations accordingly. As it was, it felt very much like the most basic version of events, without all the additional strange inclusions and expansion within the story that I’d hoped for.
That being said, Coraline is still a story and plot that I love. The biggest shame is that I didn’t read the book as a child before seeing the movie. I so wish I’d been able to read it without loading the book down with my movie-based expectations. It’s unfair to the book itself but it was unavoidable. However, I still feel that Coraline is a fantastically imaginative story that feels so unique among other children’s books, even now, almost 20 years after its release. Though I had wished for more detail and more time spent in the world with Coraline’s Other Mother, I still appreciated the quickness of the plot’s unfolding and think it’s perfect for young readers. Coraline is compelling and strange and doesn’t give readers a moment of rest as Coraline explores the creepy world of the Other Mother and is forced to save her parents and the souls of other children. These dark ideas are balanced nicely by the simplicity with which they’re told. It’s just a fun, strange little story with a classic message for children to appreciate what they have and be careful what they wish for. (Not unlike another book I recently read and reviewed, The Thief of Always by Clive Barker.)
I love the strangeness of the world Gaiman created; the button eyes, the souls of children trapped in marbles, the scuttling, severed hand. It’s all wonderfully strange for a children’s book and just creepy enough to make young readers sit in suspense. It’s dark and whimsical and fantastic.
Looking back, I don’t remember the exact books I was reading when I was 9 or 10 years old, but I know I would’ve liked to see more characters like Coraline. Coraline is a little girl determined to explore and make the most out of her lonely, quite isolated days when she is ignored by her parents and left to her own devices. I loved her bravery and curiosity.
Gaiman’s writing was nothing incredible. I had expected the writing to be a bit more evocative and focused on exploring the creepier aspects of the Other Mother’s world but it read as quite simple. The writing worked well enough for a children’s story but I think this type of story could’ve benefitted from writing a little more descriptive and rich.
Reading Coraline wasn’t exactly what I’d expected it to be. The simplicity with which the story unfolds in the book and with which it is written were both surprising to me but understandable for a children’s book. I struggled to keep my mind from comparing it to the movie but did not struggle to enjoy this read. I love the story of Coraline, whether in book form or movie form. It’s still an incredibly unique, compelling story I think readers young and old can enjoy.
4/5
Thanks for reading,
Madison