michael lambe

First a review and then (for those of you who don’t like reading) some pictures.

I just finished reading Neil Gaiman’s latest collection of short stories: Fragile Things. A little while ago I read his first collection Smoke & Mirrors - it’s interesting to compare the two. To be honest Smoke & Mirrors was a bit patchy, a bit hit-and-miss, there were some good stories in there ( “Chivalry”, “The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories”, “One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock”, “Murder Mysteries”, “Snow, Glass Apples” were my favorites…) but there’s some fairly average stuff too, and some stuff that… well, you know, it’s not that good. However, I liked it for all that, or maybe because of that. It was good to see that Neil Gaiman, prolific, mega-succesfull, gifted, god-among-writers, though he be, has feet of clay. He started out from scratch and learnt his trade like everyone else. Sometimes his work was less than satisfactory, so he learnt from that, moved on and polished and honed his craft and got better and better and better… And you can see that progress happening in Smoke & Mirrors.

Fragile Things is a far more polished and accomplished collection, Neil Gaiman is at the height of his career, knows exactly what he’s doing and can’t put a foot wrong it seems. Pretty much every story is a gem. I have my favorites though. October in the Chair is a very nice Bradburyesque piece that had me hooked from the first paragraph:

October was in the chair, so it was chilly that evening, and the leaves were red and orange and tumbled from the trees that circled the grove. The twelve of them sat around a campfire roasting huge sausages on sticks, which spat and crackled as the fat dripped on to the burning applewood, and drinking fresh apple-cider, tangy and tart in their mouths.

April took a dainty bite from her sausage, which burst open as she bit into it, spilling hot juice down her chin….

This I read in the bookshop and knew instantly: “ah, crap I’m going to have to buy this now”…

Closing Time is a perfectly delicious little ghost story of the old school, set within the traditional framework of a tale told in one of those old-style London after-hours drinking clubs. The Problem of Susan is a return to C.S. Lewis’s Narnia from a more disturbing angle. Neil Gaiman explains: “I found the disposal of Susan to be intensely problematic and deeply irritating. I suppose I wanted to write a story that would be equally as problematic, and just as much of an irritant, if from a different direction, and to talk about the remarkable power of children’s literature…”

Harlequin Valentine is tale of romance that blends seamlessly the worlds of enchantment and the mundane - something in which Neil Gaiman excels. How to Talk to Girls at Parties is such an excellent title and the story itself: “You’ve just got to talk…. They’re just girls… They don’t come from another planet…” Tee-hee.

The first story in the collection, A Study in Emerald, is pure genius - a blending of the worlds of Sherlock Holmes and Lovecraft. How is this possible? Click here and you can read this story for free on Neil Gaiman’s website. It’s a cracker.

Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things: RECOMMENDED.

Anyway, here are some recent(ish) pictures as promised. The requisite picture of myself acting the fool:

And haha! A sign with silly Japanese-English on it! Every blog in Japan should have one!
I especially liked the “100% Customer Satisfaction produce by WEED” part.