Short Fictions and Wonders (P.S.) by Neil Gaiman (2007-10-02)

This collection contains exactly the sort of stories that one would expect Neil Gaiman to write -- brilliant, original, imaginative fantasy tales that occasionally make tentative steps across the border into Horror(but never quite cross over). Fantasy, but lyric fantasy, not epic, and grounded in our reality -- there are no hobbits here, and almost all these tales concern fantasy elements that seem to have somehow brushed up against our reality, rather than the reverse.

If you like Neil Gaiman's other works, you'll like these stories; if you don't, you probably won't; if you don't know whether you do or not, but you're interested enough to read the store reviews, then this collection provides a magnificent place to start.

I will focus on the flaws, not because the collection is flawed, or because any of these flaws are significant in comparison with the compelling and powerful strengths of the stories, but because the stories are so good that a list of their virtues would become boring ("this story is the best story about this thing since Neil Gaiman's last story about this thing.")

1) Some, most, or perhaps all of these stories have appeared in prior publications; I believe "The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch" and "Fifteen Painted Cards from a Vampire Tarot" were in some editions of Smoke and Mirrors, "A Study in Emerald" was available for a long time (if it isn't still) on Neil Gaiman's website, "Harlequin Valentine" has been available as a small illustrated hardcover for a long time now, etc. If you're enough of a Neil Gaiman fan to have tracked down all those disparate stories, though, in all those disparate places, this single volume will probably be a marked convenience.

2) There are stories in here that are unsettling, but none that I would classify as actually *scary* -- the sort of horror, if it can be called horror, that becomes more frightening the more imaginative you are, the way a particularly startling pattern of shadows might terrify a child but have no effect whatsoever on a more rationally-minded adult. Long time readers of Gaiman won't consider this a flaw, but rather a virtue - subtlety is far rarer in fiction these days, and far more difficult to achieve, than simple raw horror - but I mention it as a caveat to the virgin.

3) I personally felt that some of the outside references in the stories fell a bit flat, and a few of the stories fell a bit short of Gaiman's best work. The reworking of Beowulf here ("The Monarch of the Glen") was not as effective as his earlier "Bay Wolf", and felt a bit like a pastiche of Gaiman's other characters, plus Grendel. On the other hand, "The Problem of Susan" may be the most effective and disturbing reworking of a children's story since Gaiman's own "Snow, Glass, Apples" in _Smoke and Mirrors_, and "A Study in Emerald" is simultaneously one of the best Lovecraft pastiches and one of the best Sherlock Holmes pastiche I've ever seen.

The following stories are contained in this collection:

1) An introduction where Gaiman details some background on each of the stories, and includes a short-short story on its own as well (titled "The Mapmaker")

2) A Study in Emerald

3) The Fairy Reel (poem)

4) October in the Chair

5) The Hidden Chamber

6) Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire

7) The Flints of Memory Lane

8) Closing Time

9) Going Wodwo (poem)

10) Bitter Grounds

11) Other People

12) Keepsakes and Treasures

13) Good Boys Deserve Favors

14) The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch

15) Strange Little Girls

16) Harlequin Valentine

17) Locks

18) The Problem of Susan

19) Instructions

20) How Do You Think It Feels?

21) My Life

22) Fifteen Painted Cards from a Vampire Tarot

23) Feeders and Eaters

24) Diseasemaker's Croup

25) In the End

26) Goliath

27) Pages from a Journal Found in a Shoebox Left in a Greyhound Bus Somewhere Between Tulsa, Oklahoma and Louisville, Kentucky

28) How to Talk to Girls at Parties

29) The Day the Saucers Came

30) Sunbird

31) Inventing Aladdin

32) The Monarch of the Glen

This book, which has a few fully flushed out short stories and many little snippets, glued together with a couple poems and chunks of dreams/nightmares (told in story form) highlight the genius of Gaiman's creativity. You get to see many different styles ranging from classic fables to the ramblings of a schizophrenic. In addition to the prose and poetry there is a great introduction by the author which explains the origin/motivation for each work. If you want a strange trip this is a fantastic, surprisingly long, read.

This book is for adults ... nonetheless it still has the wonderful Giaman twist on the world we live in. I am presently reading Nathan Hawthorn's book of short stories and was amazed ... the subjects are no where near the same ... and Giaman has a much higher opinion of human nature ... nonehteless both authors present the same kind of challenge for society to take a better look at itself ... look deeper into the pretension. This is an excellent series of short stories.

Best audio book I have ever listened to... The Graveyard Book. Second best... Neverwhere. Clearly I am a fan of Neil Gaiman and I enjoyed listening to this but it falls short of the Graveyard Book and Neverwhere. I would recommend Fragile Things but feel the need to make the listener aware, most of the stories that are in M is for Magic are in Fragile Things and Neil introduces much more adult themes in these stories. Having said "Adult Themes" I feel I have missed the mark, really more adolescent boy themes. More along the lines of all of the female superheros in comics having large breasts. Some of the stories have that kind of mentality.

I freely admit to buying this book based on Pratchett/Gaiman's Good Omens -- I like anything Terry Pratchett writes. Unlike Pratchett, who solidly delivers, I found this book to be unevenly jumpy, allowing for the fact that it is a collection of short stories over a period of time.

An intro of over 20 pages strikes me as a rip-off considering some of the work. Sorry, Mr. Gaiman, you sold 'em and that's certainly sufficient, any other self-interest is more than I want to know. The book is sub-titled "Short Fictions and Wonders", apparently a way to smooth over the fact that they are not all short stories, some of the 'wonders' are prose poems -- fair warning, they ain't wondrous.

An attempt at A. Conan Doyle's style, in A Study In Emerald, is not amusing nor anything except a waste of space -- Gaiman is not Doyle, and I doubt his readers spend any time wishing he were. The fantasy work is probably an acquired taste, and my taste runs to Beagle or Pratchett, both masters in the field. So, the stories, some of them better than others, seem mostly forced or too over the top.

This is maybe not his best work, but at the price of books today, I'm going to think long and hard before I venture to purchase another. A short story collection should give you at least one to mark for rereading, and this doesn't deliver.
pat chapin [...].

Nothing about this series of short stories cpmels me to feelcmuch empathy toward Gaiman's protagonists. While being interesting thought projections, obviously from too many nights spent in hotel rooms, there are seldom satisfying conclusions, and often gaping logistical holes. I can tell that, without Sir Terry to modify your temper (like C. S. Lewis - who you misunderstood and then slandered, btw - was for Tolkein) you might have faded into the obscurity you deserve.

Everything was ok, and it arrived before Christmas, although they'd told me I would receive it at december 31. =)

Correu tudo bem, e os livros ainda chegaram antes do Natal, mesmo eles dizendo q chegaria só dia 31/12. =)

I purchased this at my best friend's recommendation to read The Problem of Susan--frankly, I suspect this is true of far more reviewers than admit it in their reviews here--and I found nothing else of merit.

Mind you, The a Problem of Susan was exactly what you'd expect. "Hmm, what would happen if I wrote a C- short story about the only character really worth remembering as an adult from C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia? I bet I'd sell a lot of books. Oh, let's have a weird sex scene between the jesus and evil metaphors... Sell. Even. More!"

As for the rest of the book, that which isn't merely dismissible is almost unreadable, so let me make it easy for you:

What happened to Susan after her family was killed? Well, being an orphaned British woman, naturally she became an academic and an old maid. Did her time in Narnia illuminate her adult life? Possibly, it's unclear. Did she regret not being a friend of Narnia and dying with the rest of her family? Possibly, it's unclear.

There you go. You may move on and purchase something more worthwhile. I would recommend something with more unpredictable suspense, like Stephen King's Carrie, or something with more subtle nuance, like anything by Barbara Cartland.

First – legal stuff – I was given a copy of this book to review by William Morrow also part of Harper Voyager, who I review books for on occasion. The opinion written below is mine and mine to own.

So I was thinking about book reviews and how in all honestly most of them are not done well. They give you the background of the book, talk about the author and then break it down in bits and pieces given you the good, the bad and the why was this even published opinions. And most times, I get very little from them. BUT and I say that loudly, there are useful tidbits and I sometimes go buy the book.

I’m getting to the review, just hang with me.

Neil Gaiman – pretty well-known. Been writing for years. Pretty darn good. Has huge amounts of fans, in fact, I think if I gave him a bad review, I may get trolled. So the question is, why review his books? Huge fan base, good writer, people can depend on him. Quick answer – in order for him to continue getting published he has to keep growing his base, he has to keep getting good reviews. If it went silent, well so would Neil.

So, yeah, I guess book reviews (at least good ones) are essential.

I’m getting there, just keep reading.

I am a half and half fan of Gaiman’s. I loved American Gods, Anasai Boys and Good Omens is a top ten for me. I don’t care much for his other stuff. I can hear gasps across the universe. He can be very dark in his writing. But he’s got that Doctor Who British humor that I love. And he also wrote one of my fave episodes of Doctor Who – The Doctor’s Wife.

So there you go – plug for the author.

On with it already.

To the book – Fragile Things (I do hope you pronounced it the right way. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.) When you buy this book, because you will, YOU MUST READ THE INTRODUCTION. It is lovely. It is Neil. You feel like you are sitting in a coffee shop in some quaint town and it’s raining and he is sitting across from you and telling you things about his books and you just can’t stop staring and on some level you kind of fall in love.

This book is short stories and poems (which you get the poems for free!). Some are really strange. Some a little bizarre. Some down right scary. Some are beautiful. Some are dark and disturbing. And most are just lovely. I’m not going to break it down and tell you about each one, he does that in the introduction and besides, I want to make you so intrigued you will go buy the book.

I enjoyed this book. Truly. And I think you will as well. THAT IS – if you read fantasy/sci-fi/odd things, if you like dark humor, if you don’t mind a little blood, sex and rock and roll. You will like this book – if not, don’t read it and for god’s sake if you don’t like it, just leave it. Put it in one of those little free libraries for someone else to enjoy. Don’t go all stinky troll like and post terrible things.

Mother always said – if you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all.

I know part of the reason they are promoting this is because of the movie – How to talk to Girls at Parties – which is a very short story in the book and not really a fave but cute.

So there it is. Short, sweet and to the point.

Good book – pick it up.

I fully understand that any short story collection is going to have its hits and misses -- the trick is to figure out whether the hits outweigh the misses. In the case of Neil Gaiman's "Fragile Things," it has a few enjoyable stories but by and large the bad stories are SO bad they overwhelm the good. I had been looking forward to reading this collection, mostly for the short story "The Problem of Susan" (having finished C. S. Lewis' Narnia books and been disappointed by the ultimate fate of Susan, I was curious to see another author's take on the subject). And I won't lie, some of these stories were enjoyable reads and I honestly liked them. But these stories are few and far between, and most of the rest of them feel incomplete or are simply just plain bad.

I'll get the ones that worked out of the way first -- the best stories in this collection, in my humble opinion, are "A Study in Emerald," "The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch," "How To Talk To Girls At Parties," and "Sunbird." "A Study in Emerald" is a fascinating fusion of the writings of Arthur Conan Doyle and HP Lovecraft, and somehow thrusting Sherlock Holmes into a world ruled by Lovecraft's otherworldly monsters works in this context. "The Facts in the Case..." is an odd but somehow fascinating story about a carnival that somehow grants one's greatest wish, while "How To Talk To Girls At Parties" is a humorous tale of two oblivious boys who don't seem to recognize that the girls they're hitting on are aliens. "Sunbird" is Gaiman's take on one of mythology's most famous birds, and was actually quite delightful to read.

The rest of the stories range from "just okay" to "awful." The "just okay" ones are decent but ultimately unmemorable, while the awful ones wallow in misery and depravity, leave huge plot holes or end without proper endings, or just feel like pointless ramblings. Gaiman has a weirdly twisted imagination that can be brilliant when handled right, but can also just lead to unpleasant weirdness. And his obsession with sex in this collection, especially underage sex, is stomach-churning. No, I don't need to read about how your main character is a pedophile or how a man mixes his own bodily fluids into modeling clay to make a statue...

Two stories of note -- "The Monarch of the Glen" and "The Problem of Susan." The first story is a novella at the very end of the collection that ties into his novel "American Gods." Like many of the other short stories, it's okay but not great, and I wish I'd read "American Gods" before reading it. As for "The Problem of Susan," I encourage you to NEVER read it if you love "The Chronicles of Narnia." Gaiman manages to defile a beloved series of children's fantasy -- one that's well-known for having strong religious themes -- by including pointless gore and sex at the expense of actually answering any questions the reader might have about Susan's history after Narnia.

I've enjoyed Neil Gaiman's writing in the past, and I do hope to give him another chance. But "Fragile Things" came very close to turning me off from ever reading anything by him again. Many of the stories are bad, pointless, and/or disgusting to read, and the few good stories in the mix aren't enough to save it. I just hope "American Gods" and "The Graveyard Book" are better reads...

Three reasons;

1) He experiments with story format - one story Strange Little Girls - is a bunch of paragraphs with bold headings like Silence, Rattlesnake, Time, Heart of Gold. Short, unclear descriptions lead to nowhere. Other formats include poetry which is okay, but not what people want to read, when they buy a short story book.

2) Stories just weren't as fun to read as Gaiman has given us in the past. Plots just okay, characters mediocre, didn't understand his goal for many of the tales.

3) Worst kind of short story? When you DON'T GET AN ENDING! That's right, he leaves you hanging. "So what happens next? I guess I'm supposed to make up my own ending." I DESPISE THIS TYPE OF WRITING. Just finish the story, okay? Please?

This final point means you invest yourself in the context and emotion of the writing and get nothing, in the end.

Felt like I wasted time plowing through this, hoping for something good. And good didn't show up much, at all.

Go buy Trigger Warning instead. That Gaiman book is great, gave it 5 Stars.

I listened to Fragile Things in the methodical, resonant and master story telling voice of none other than the author himself, Neil Gaiman and I must say it was a joy and a delight through and through. This was also one of my first (gasp!) introduction to short stories. Generally, I'm into novels and longer works of fiction or non-fiction, and the few short stories I had heard before were so short that it gave me little time to attach to anything or anything and little pleasure in the process. So I didn't pursue them again.

As a huge HUGE fan of Neil Gaiman - The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Star Dust, and middle of Neverwhere - and having watched some of his YouTube videos, and the high recommendation of my sister-in-law, who is a doctor yet knows her fiction better than anyone, I grabbed Fragile Things on audio and began a journey into the mysterious, creative, unpredictable, rich, colorful, imaginative world of Neil Gaiman.

My husband has the book on his Kindle and while I love to read, I can't imagine the experience being anything close. If you can get this book on audio, do. It is Gaiman's story-telling voice, the way he speaks through the diverse range of his characters, and the intonation, the accent, the rising and falling volume of his voice that captivate your heart. Even if the story is so short that it ends before it hardly has begun, even if the story doesn't always make any sense (whoever said that was a requirement, anyway!), even if the subject matter sounds so dull or grim or gruesome that you're wondering if you can even stay focused or stomach it, even then, I could listen to Gaiman just because I love - adore - his voice. Ahem. There. I can't help it. Talent draws us in and we don't have to understand why we are drawn to certain things.

Now having said all that, I wasn't crazy about all the stories as far as context goes. Here are the gems that I gleaned from the book. My all-time favorite is October in the Chair - a short story with all the months of the year as characters, holding some sort of meeting. It's imaginary delight. The rest are below, but we all have different tastes and we experience stories in our own ways.

My absolute favorites from Fragile Things:
October in the Chair ***
The Hidden Chamber
A Study in Emerald
Closing Time ***
Bitter Grounds ***
Good Boys Deserve Favors
Sunbird
The Monarch of the Glen

Very similar to Smoke and Mirrors, Fragile Things contains an abundance of variety for fans of short fiction. There's everything from poems, to even a non-fiction story or two, as well as a variety of fiction ranging from one page all the way to novella length, fantasy to sci-fi to dark fantasy, and even a tad of horror.

Speaking of the novella, The Monarch of Glen is easily one of the best tales is the book. Anyone who loved American Gods (and I, for one, loved it sooooo much) and wants to revisit Shadow as well as the atmosphere of that masterpiece should definitely read that story.
A couple great stories were: Feeders and Eaters, which is an eerie tale that is "mostly true" and has an ending that really sticks in your gut.
Goliath is a bit tough to follow, but shows the true depths to Gaiman's superior imagination.
October in the chair is a fun-filled fantasy story.
Sunbird, actually the last story I read, is another imaginative piece. Vintage Gaiman here.
How to Talk to Girls at Parties is an entertaining blend of sci-fi, mystery, and--incredibly enough--awkward teenage literature.
A Study in Emerald I actually didn't know what was so amazing about it, until after I finished the story I read the wiki page of it, to which I said, "Oh, Wow!"
How do you Think it Feels, no fantasy here, just a straight-up story that's very, very good.
Lastly, Other People is very impressive, as it packs quite the punch in a matter of less than four pages.

So, with all that said, why didn't I give it five stars?
Stories like Fifteen Painted Cards From a Vampire Tarot, Harlequin Valentine, and Keepsakes and Treasures, really didn't do it for me. They were too deceptive. I enjoy stories most when they are entertaining. When writers employ the whole "leaving it to the imagination" type of thing it really doesn't appeal to me.
More than once a story would I end, and I don't know if it's just me personally that the stories went over my head, but I would finish a story and be confused, and, by virtue of that, disappointed.

I've now read plenty of Gaiman's short work, and I have to say, while I've found a few really good stories, the two novels I've read him are far better. Nevertheless, Gaiman fans, especially if you want to read some of Neil's poetry, will not find their money wasted when reading this book.

A book of short stories is always hard to review. My reaction is much like my reaction to his books, I like some and dislike others. There are some stories that just didn’t make sense to me and others I enjoyed.

I enjoyed the homage to Sherlock Holmes but scratched my head over Strange Little Girls.

I read the other Gaiman reviews and wonder what I missed. Beats me!

This collection was written and performed by the author. Before the stories begin, Neil gives us an introduction and shares with the reader/listener information on each story we will be reading. I found this collection highly entertaining and wonderfully done.

Just well-told tales from interesting points of view. Like Edgar Allen Poe with an impish potty-mouth or Rod Serling in an LSD feedback loop where fantasy and reality keep flipping. With sharp descriptions like the "old woman ... with two brown raisin eyes peering out of her cinnamon roll face," with weird narratives scrolling across an archetypal screen of "the magician," "the fool," "feeders and eaters," the eternal "fight of man against monster," nearly all of these stories are vivid, quick in passing, without much exposition or denouement -- too short for nuanced development or any real emotional investment, but thought-provoking and fun to read, with a feather-touch of postmodern pretense here and there.

Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders (Morrow, 2006)

The reviews of this book have been surprisingly mixed; "surprisingly" because there's a lot of really good stuff here. Sure, it's inconsistent, but when you put together a collection of ten years of an author's work, not everything is going to ring. I mean, think about it; what was the last single-author short story collection you read where everything was of absolutely top quality? With collections it's often a matter of perspective, and that's reflected in the reviews (Publisher's Weekly calls the collection "largely disappointing," while Library Journal gives it a starred review; considering those two often march in lockstep, you can see just how much a matter of perspective it is).

There is some wonderful, lovely stuff here. "The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch" stands out, perhaps, but one could just as easily choose "Bitter Grounds" or "October in the Chair" as the best of the stories in here. Or "Strange Little Girls." Or "Feeders and Eaters." Or... you get the picture.

Gaiman also includes some poetry here, and I usually cringe when I see the two mixed in an anthology that's mostly prose. Let's face it, most short story writers who dabble in poetry make a thoroughly awful job of it. But Gaiman realizes that where free verse is concerned, the rhythm's the thing, and as such, the stuff here is readable, at least. It's not great, timeless stuff, certainly not of equal stature with the prose pieces here, but it doesn't hurt the volume (in the way Stephen King's poems did in Skeleton Crew, for example).

If you're a Gaiman fan, you don't need my recommendation to pick this up. If you're not, you may be better served starting with the brilliant novel American Gods, or the ever-popular (and for good reason) Sandman series of graphic novels. But when you've gotten your head around Gaiman's narrative voice, come back here and get another dose of it; you'll like what you find. ****

Gaiman is a writer of rich and vivid imagination. This collection of short stories, short fiction and poems demonstrate his talent on every page. Hovering between reality and fantasy he has created a distinctive world peopled with ordinary people, young and old, who meet up with ghosts, zombies and other creatures. With great skill and ease Gaiman creates credible characters and compelling scenarios.

Some "fragile things" describe dreams, others move effortlessly from actuality to visions of otherworldliness often taking the reader by surprise. Most of the stories in this collection have a serious, some a macabre, side to them. At the same time, humour and irony are natural companions. There is the young boy, ignored by his family and peers, who finally meets a friend and companion as he runs away to start a new life. A Harlequin character reinvents himself with every real life Valentine heart he sends to an object of his desire. Storytelling is a theme for many of the characters in the collection. In "October in the Chair" we listen in as every month competes for the best story that the others haven't heard before. Many of the stories were inspired by other writers and friends and fiction pieces were written for their magazines or anthologies.

While each of the stories has been published previously, it is a treat to have them collected in one volume. Every piece stands by itself, yet, when read contiguously each adds elements to a whole creating for the reader a complex tapestry of imaginary lives. Anybody who has read other Gaiman books will welcome his volume. For newcomers, Fragile Things is a great introduction to his work. [Friederike Knabe]

Neil Gaiman is one of the most inventive, most original writers working today -- and that's not an opinion but a true statement. As Harlan Ellison once said, you can identify a story as one of his in the first sentence. The thirty-one short stories and poems in this collection run the gamut from light-hearted humor that will make you smile, to dark, rusty-edged pieces that will make you look over your shoulder. They include a Hugo-winner and a couple of Locus-Award-winners, but there's not a bad one in the lot. One of my favorites is "A Study in Emerald," a Sherlock Holmes pastiche. These things usually aren't very successful (in my opinion), but this one, which brings in H. P. Lovecraft's Great Old Ones, is first-rate. "Goliath" is the closest Neil comes in this collection to a classic science fiction story, and it's excellent. "Sunbird," which the author wrote for his daughter as an 18th-birthday present," starts out (you will think) kind of scattershot but then all the skeins weave together into a lovely bit of folklore. "Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves" is a nice bit of inside-out Gothic romanticism. "Other People" is sort of a moral lesson, and benefits from being read aloud; so does the very short "In the End," which is sort of Genesis in reverse. "Keepsakes and Treasures," featuring Mr. Smith and Mr. Alice, is about (among other things) the limitations of money. "How Do You Think It Feels?" is somewhat depressing by the nature of its story, but it will stick with you. "How To Talk to Girls at Parties," on the other hand, is both poetic and spooky as hell. There are a couple of ghost story/urban legend pieces, including "Closing Time" and "Feeders and Eaters," which didn't do anything for me -- but that's just my tastes. I didn't care much for "The Problem of Susan," either, because I never much cared for Narnia. Of the poems, the best are "Locks," about why storytelling is important, and "My Story," which is very funny, and "The Day the Saucers Came," which is very, very funny, and also rather sweet. The weakest pieces -- relatively speaking -- are "Bitter Grounds," which I guess I just didn't get the point of, and "The Facts in the Case of the Disappearance of Miss Finch," which is sort of a Twilight Zone yarn gone awry. "Harlequin Valentine" doesn't quite seem to go anywhere, either.

One of my favorite things when reading a collection of short stories is when the author shares some insights about how the stories came to be. Gaiman's comments are often just as entertaining as the stories themselves with comments ranging from one discerning line to an in depth analysis of the story. He makes sure the reader knows that each story and poem have their own story to tell.

Some well-told tales...
"A Study in Emerald" is an incredible mash-up of Doyle and Lovecraft with a great twist. A story that rewards a second or third reading.

The Fairy Reel" True pain wrapped up in a fantasy.

"October in The Chair"- All 12 months have their own stories to tell and October's is as spooky as you would think. I'm waiting for the rest of the month's to tell their tales; if there all as good as this one it will make a tremendous read.

"Forbidden Brides of Faceless Slaves...-"What would happen if a character from Poe or Hawthorne tried to write some escapist fare? Would it involve a toaster?

"Closing Time"- A story I've read a number of times now to try to figure out why it's so disturbing. I still don't know why but Gaiman touches on something very creepy here, the reader's own imagination.

"Other People"- It's really frightening when an imaginative writer takes a look at what hell would be like.

"Good Boys Deserve Fairies"- A boy and his double-bass. A short and intriguing slice of life.

"Harlequin Valentine" Harlequin finally gets his or does he? An excellent use of the commedia dell'arte's great trickster.

"Locks" Goldilocks and fatherhood make for an interesting pairing in this poem.

"The Problem of Susan" I remember reading the Narnia books to my younger siblings and having the same problem that Gaiman does with Lewis' treatment of Susan Pevensie. Gaiman decided to do something about it.

"Instructions" Surviving fairy tales and fantasies in 10 easy stanzas.

"My Life" As Gaiman says himself-The Weekly World News put to verse.

"In The End" The Book of Genesis backwards-seems about right.

"Goliath" A great take on the science fiction stand by "Which world is the real one?" but with more heart than most.

"How to Talk to Girls at Parties" Sometimes you just go to the wrong house...

"The Day the Saucers Came" A sci-fi version of "My Life." This one works, too.

"Sunbird" Predictable, but in a good way with depth and characters that remind of the better fantasy stories of writers like Bradbury.

"Inventing Aladdin" A new look at Scheherazade with a brilliant last line "We save our lives in such unlikely ways."

"The Monarch of The Glen" AMERICAN GODS fans rejoice-Shadow's back! (If you don't know what I'm talking about go read [ASIN:0060558121 American Gods: A Novel]]

Not quite as good or tales that didn't hold my interest

"Hidden Chamber" -A Gothic poem that really doesn't build to much.

""The Flints of Memory Lane"- "This is my ghost story and an unsatisfactory thing it is too." Yep.

Going Wodwo"- A Green Man poem that takes you unconvincingly into the wild.

"Bitter Grounds"- A meandering tale of zombies, Voodoo, and New Orleans-All atmosphere without depth.

"Keepsakes and Treasures" A very unlikable group of people inhabit this story. Gaiman write there may be more to this story; my response is "Why?"

"The Facts in The Case" One of those stories when you get to the end and say, "That's it?"

Strange Little Girls"/"Pages From A Journal" Tori Amos does not bring out the best in Gaiman's writing.

"How Do You Think It Feels?" I've never really understood the pain of the one who commits the betrayal so this one was lost on me.

"15 Painted Cards from a Vampire's Tarot" Might work better with the paintings Gaiman mentions. As it is some stories are more intriguing then others but they are just sketches.

"Feeders and Eaters" You know where this one is going right from the start. No surprises here.

Diseasemaker's Croup- Probably worked better in its original setting. Here it's just adrift in much better material.

Plenty to like here and even the weaker stories have merit. Throw in the great intro and this is a great collection of stories from one of today's most imaginative writers.

Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders is an Aladdin's cave of treasures, containing more than thirty short stories, poems, vignettes, and literary forms in between. From a novella about a modern-day demigod's travels in Scotland, to a short story about some far-out exchange students, to a set of poetic instructions for traversing fairy tales, Neil Gaiman's creations are above all stories. Even at their most clever and postmodern, his works have the authentic ring of tales passed on at campfires, or shared by strangers waiting for a plane.

"October in the Chair" is a standout tale of childhood sorrow, worthy of its dedication to Ray Bradbury, and is one of several pieces here dealing with young people. Gaiman's pleasure in playing in other writers' sandboxes is clear in the Arthur Conan Doyle/H. P. Lovecraft mashup "A Study in Emerald," as well as in "The Problem of Susan," wherein he gives C. S. Lewis' Susan Pevensie a much-deserved second look. "Bitter Grounds" tells the story of one man's journey to transfiguration in New Orleans. Gaiman's exquisite command of myth is also on display in this collection, from the titular creature of "Sunbird" to the cleverly deployed figures of Northern European myth in "The Monarch of the Glen." Many of these pieces are stories about stories, with all the literary embroidery that entails, from various framing devices (the book's introduction, for one...) to the commentary on the conflict between realism and the Gothic that is "Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire."

Many pieces in this volume wend through dark territories - some gruesome, others purely disturbing. While plenty of these "short fictions and wonders" will delight and amaze, Fragile Things is not for the faint-hearted. If you want more after reading it, check out American Gods, a novel featuring the protagonist of this collection's "The Monarch of the Glen," or try one of the collected volumes of Gaiman's landmark Sandman comic series.

Who is the best author actively writing adult fantasy nowadays? For my money, it's Neil Gaiman. Not only does he produce fantasy that's a clear change of pace from the standards elves, wizards and dragons, but he also is one of the only successful fantasy writers capable of telling a story in a single volume. But more than that, Gaiman is just a great writer.

Fragile Things is a collection of his short stories (with an occasional poem thrown in the mix). Right off the bat, we get a wonderful tale, "A Study in Emerald", a Sherlock Holmes set in an alternate England in which Lovecraft's Elder Gods are not a fiction. Gaiman's stories don't always rely on a twist, but "Study" does offer a good one.

Prior to reading this collection, I'd previously read two of the stories, both in a Year's Best Horror anthology. They were among the best in that anthology, and they're even good on re-reading. "Forbidden Brides" (I'm abridging the lengthy title) is a nice parody of Gothic horror and "The Problem of Susan" offers a different take on the conclusion of C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. Fragile Things also includes "The Monarch of the Glen", a sequel of sorts to the novel American Gods (though it stands on its own); this story offers a take on the Beowulf story that is different from Gaiman's screenplay for the recent Beowulf movie.

I won't say every story is perfect, and I've personally never been much for poems, but overall, this is a fun read. My one gripe is with the introduction, in which Gaiman gives comments on each story; I think the comments would go better before or after the story, not at the beginning of the book. And while I like Gaiman's novels more, Fragile Things is a great book that showcases exactly how good he is.

Fragile Things is a collection of Neil Gaimen's short stories, and some poetry also, along with a section of his own commentary regarding each of the stories within. The entire volume is interesting in that there are many different examples of his style of writing. Short stories that I myself would never have thought ready to publish tend to hold up a mirror to my own creative bias. I learned a lot about the crafting of each story and now marvel at the variety of approaches he takes. Each story is very good, but of course, when dealing with various forms of style some stories will strike a stronger note with each reader.

In Fragile Things, my favorite part about the whole anthology is Gaimen's commentary. I find this as the most entertaining piece because it is his voice providing a little insight to the how's and why's of each story. Talking about how he lost this story in an attic somewhere or the background of how a particular piece was commissioned. These comments provide just some of the most inspiring little tidbits of knowledge and really allow one to just see why Gaimen is so prolific.

Without reviewing each story, as that would be a huge undertaking beyond the scope of this review, I will highlight a few stories I found particularly relevant to me. So, to begin:

A Study in Emerald: I'm a fan of Sherlock Holmes and this crossover to Lovecraftian mythos was just amazing. It is no wonder why Gaimen was "mysteriously inducted into the Baker Street Irregulars" after publishing this adventure. It captures the Victorian feel of a Holmes story and adds that bit of Lovecraft just enough to make it otherworldly. I was not disappointed.

October in the Chair: This was an intriguing story in which all the months of the year gather around a fire and tell stories. The scene is reminiscent of a couple of older men bickering in their little way, nitpicking from each of their set-in-stone personality. The story October tells is a nice little ghost story about a little boy who is out of place in his family, his school, his town and decides to run away. Though the story ends a little undone it is completed in a way that justifies the sudden ending.

Other People: A beautiful take on Hell. This story just captures the imagination and it being only three pages long really makes its impact. A man finds himself in Hell and is submitted to what seems to be an eternal torture, until he discovers its purpose. Great, great story!

Good Boys Deserve Favors: A young boy is forced in school to pick a musical instrument and due to his small size decides to make a joke of picking the double bass. The ending just takes my breath away. I love the power that music seems to create when one's heart and soul magically summons the most enchanting song. This story doesn't disappoint. Reminds me of a scene or two from Patrick Rothfuss' `The Name of the Wind', astounding!

Harlequin Valentine: I never get enough of good jester stories and this one helps feed that need. Harlequin, from the classic opera, is seeking his Columbine in the modern world. When he finds her the situation turns around on him. Lovely!

The Problem with Susan: This is the Gaimen ending to the Chronicles of Narnia, telling the story of Susan, the somewhat left behind girl from the Narnia stories. It turns out she faded into the modern world, until a reporter strives to uncover her story.

Feeders and Eaters: Gaimen's rendition of a vampire tale, down to earth and a little haunting. Takes a different route on telling the story, and very good at that.

Goliath: a bit of fan fiction, sort of, from the movie The Matrix. It was originally hosted on the movie's website, and I remember reading it back then, and has been added to this compendium. A story of a very large man who ends up accidently perceiving the illusion of the Matrix. Things change during his life and he recalls the inconsistencies, ultimately having his life relived, becoming a British special projects experimental pilot. He finds out that he is chosen as the last ditch effort to save the real earth. A haunting story in which he lives out the remaining moments of his life back in the Matrix.

A lot of stories, and out of thirty short stories and poems these made the most impact. Others also would have made the cut, including Closing Time, Keepsakes and Treasures, and How to Talk to Girls at Parties, but I didn't want to get too out of hand on this review. The poetry is good also but I've never been good at reading and understanding poetry so I will avoid making asinine comments I have no business making.

This is a very good collection of fantasy, horror, and mystery, and allows one to get a grand introduction to the styles and creations of Neil Gaimen. Definitely a book worth picking up.

My favorite collection of short stories so far, but now I'm approaching the end of the binge reading, just 2 more books to go....

Per ora la mia collezione di racconti favorita, ma ormai la lettura di Gaiman si avvicina alla fine, soltanto una raccolta ed un romanzo e poi ho finito....

Did you ever pick up one of those compilation albums by one of your favorite musicians, only to find it to be full of undeveloped ideas and vanity pieces that were rightfully withheld from the proper albums in the first place? This anthology from the usually awesome Neil Gaiman is the literary equivalent of a collection of B-sides and outtakes, and there's a reason many of these ideas are not in his much more developed novels. Like any odds n' sods collection, there are a few flashes of brilliance here, like the modern Sherlock Holmes tale "A Study in Emerald" and the gruesomely whimsical "Sunbird." There are also a few enjoyable entries that highlight Gaiman's well-known interest in fairy tales, like "Harlequin Valentine." But most of the short stories here are toss-offs to themed anthologies or tribute editions; and regardless of the fact that several of these tales were award winners in the realms where they originally appeared, many seem undeveloped and arbitrary.

Gaiman is correct in stating that his tribute to Ray Bradbury, "October in the Chair," would have been better written by Bradbury himself, and tributes to other works like "Goliath" (The Matrix) and "The Problem of Susan" (Narnia) are vanity pieces at best. Some stories such as "Diseasemaker's Croup" are disappointinggly anemic snippets of thin and fanciful ideas, with probably more reward for the writer than the reader. This book's examples of Gaiman's poetry and targeted prose (such as the snippets written for the Strange Little Girls album by Tori Amos) are intriguing but directionless, and the majority of short stories are just plain unmemorable. Gaiman is one of my favorite writers and I recommend his novels whole-heartedly. But this collection is surely not appropriate for the casual fan, and even serious fans will probably find it disappointing and a bit self-indulgent. [~doomsdayer520~]

This excellent story collection is a bit like a pop CD that is frontloaded with its best material. Thus, if this book had ended on page 112, I would have been quite happy. This book's interstitial poems aside (which Gaiman essentially apologizes for in the author's notes), the stories up to that point range from good to brilliant. It's a fantastic run of storytelling, and I was sad to see it end.

But end it does. From there in, the tales range from:
-- the unbelievable ("Keepsakes and Treasures") and yes, I use the word advisedly...
-- to the uninspired ("Good Boys Deserve Favors")...
-- to the unfortunate, namely, CD liner notes for Neil's "personal friend," Tori Amos ("Strange Little Girls")...
-- and sometimes, back to the excellent ("The Monarch of the Glen," among others).

I think that part of the problem with the material stems from the fact that people apparently ring Gaiman asking him to contribute for specialty anthologies. ("Neil, I'm putting together a collection of stories about gargoyles. Are you in?") This type of "spec work" is perhaps not the best way to seek inspiration. So to continue my previous analogy, this book's substandard material should be thought of as a CD's bonus tracks.

That said, FRAGILE THINGS is a mostly enjoyable read, and to reiterate, the first third of the book alone is worth the price of admission.

I have only discovered Gaiman recently; I read Coraline and The Graveyard Book both of which I loved, and I am now working my way through his back catalog. Fragile Things is a collection of short stories and poems. I am not a huge fan of the short story, because I always find I want more than I get and often resent the ending to the story as I have just begun to get into the rhythm of the story. This collection was a very mixed bag, so I really liked several of the tales and others were just okay. Because the two previous books I read were children's books I was a little surprised by the language and some of the sex scenes, but it's just because I wasn't expecting it. I would have to say my favorite story was October in the Chair, where the months of the year have a sort of board meeting, and one month gets to tell a story. I would have loved to hear each month's story. I also really liked The Monarch of the Glen which featured an enigmatic character named Shadow; I'd really like to read something more substantial featuring this character. The few poems were lovely and because I listened to this on audio there is always the added bonus of Neil Gaiman's beautiful voice. Overall this was an interesting if not great collection of horror/fantasy/sci-fi tales. And now I will be moving onto Anansai Boys.

Bestselling fantasy and graphic novelist Neil Gaiman is also an excellent writer of short stories and several of the short pieces in this new collection were either winners or nominees in award ceremonies for fantasy, horror or science fiction. Its tough trying to pigeon-hole any of the stories included in here like "A Study in Emerald" which combines a Sherlock Holmes mystery with science fiction to great effect. "How to Talk To Girls at Parties" combines teen angst with creepy science fiction for a wonderful story and "Harlequin Valentine" is a deliciously funny tale of love and loss. "The Monarch of the Glen" ends this book in a very high note by following Shadow, the hero of Gaiman's modern classic novel American Gods, as he embarks on an unexpected supernatural adventure on the coast of Scotland. Longtime fans of Gaiman's writing as well as those who appreciate modern fantasy or the short story form will find a lot to enjoy in this collection.

Gaiman is an incredible story teller, he takes stories that we have heard before and infuses them with new life. These stories are one of a kind and you will need to say alert, not everything is always as it seems. It is like you get into a grove and you think you know where the story is headed only to be blindsided by an unexpected and incongruent twist.

If you are a Gaiman fan this will come as no surprise, if you have never read Gaiman then you are in for a rare treat. Either way you will be happy you bought this compilation. "B" sides can be great....

In listening to Fragile Things, I found that Gaiman's strength is not necessarily is writing skill.

No, the man is a storyteller first and foremost. His literal voice matches his written "voice" for telling a tale.

Fragile Things is a wonderful collection of short stories -- tender and horrifying, hilarious and sad. Being an American Gods fan and very fond of Shadow, I especially liked the last novella, The Monarch of the Glen.

A Study in Emerald is sure to delight any Holmsian, and there are many other stories that will make you twitch, shiver or smile tenderly.

I encourage anyone who enjoys audiobooks to buy this with the wide eyes and open heart of a kid who looks up saying, "Tell me a story!"

*grin* Lucky Maddy, Holly and Michael...

"One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless.

The tale is the map which is the territory.

You must remember this." (p. XIX, the Mapmaker)

Fragile Things is Neil Gaiman's second collection and my first experience with his short fiction. These stories are wildly disparate, ranging from the bleak to the jubilant, and the majority of these stories function by throwing the narrator into contact with some other world, be it a literal one or the simple breath of wonder into an otherwise ordinary life. This is surely not the first time that Gaiman's tackled the theme - in fact, it's no secret that almost all of his works boil down to "normal bloke discovers magical world" - but the number of different ways that the same general idea can be reached from is simply staggering.

One of Gaiman's techniques here comes not from showing us the point of the story via the world building, but rather via said world building's deconstruction, putting the story's soul in the violation of the initially established principles, the process of exposing a loophole or intricacy that we didn't first grasp. This warping of the rules - a game that doesn't so much violate the initial promise to the reader but rather twists it until the result is utterly unrecognizable but thoroughly satisfying - can be found in a good number of the collection's stories. Harlequin Valentine begin with our viewpoint harlequin affixing his heart to his Columbine's door, and when she opens the door, we get underway. The story is a quick and witty affair, consisting of the Harlequin's toying with his one-day valentine and messing with the lives of everyone that he encounters as he follows her. At this point, the reader thinks that they understand the rules, but they've got no idea. It's at the end of the story, where the harlequin's love has a consequence unexpected enough to shatter everything we know about how the story's cosmos function, that the tale goes from whimsical to powerful.

Not every story in the collection ends in a twist, but almost every one does mess with the reader's perceptions and expectations. At the end of Harlequin Valentine, the former Columbine says: "'That's the joy of a harlequinade, after all, isn't it? We change our costumes. We change our roles.'" (p. 174, Harlequin Valentine) Almost every story in the collection, and almost every character in those stories, is a slippery being, refusing to settle into clichés or expectations. Bitter Grounds is a story of shifting identity, and as the narrator drifts further and further away from whom he was, the tone morphs to accompany his shift. Keepsakes and Treasures, a dark and dreary tale, takes a second out of its forward progress to point out that, if not for the oppressive prose and characterization, we'd be reading a fairy tale: "I told him I thought it sounded like something from a story book. 'I mean, think about it. A race of people whose only asset is the beauty of their men. So every century they sell one of their men for enough money to keep the tribe going for another hundred years.'" (p. 128, Keepsakes and Treasures)

One of the most interesting stories from the collection, and 2004's Hugo winner, A Study in Emerald, is impossible to predict from start to finish. It is, as Gaiman explains in the introduction, an attempt to wed the rationality of Sherlock Holmes with the otherworldly unknowability of Lovecraft's horrors. Stephen R. Donaldson (and Writing Excuses) has talked often about how fiction is a combination of the familiar and the unfamiliar, and the reason that A Study of Emerald is so weird in Gaiman's catalog is that the magic is actually the familiar, here. Though the two ingredients seem as likely to combine well as peanut butter and cheese, the mixture actually works, and neither element of the story feels forced...and yet I did not love A Study in Emerald, and the reason why is the problem I have with some of the stories in this collection.

Neil Gaiman is a writer of ideas, and they are fabulous ideas, big and witty and wondrous. The problem is, when ideas of that caliber get down in the trenches, they occasionally push other parts of the story aside. This works at times, like in the aforementioned Harlequin Valentine, when the torrent of bizarre ideas and imagery leads to a great emotional moment, but it can also lead to stories where you can admire what Gaiman's done, but can't really enjoy the result all that much.

The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch suffers quite badly from this. The story is a about a small group of friends and acquaintances who are taken on a tour of ten increasingly bizarre rooms. As they go, one of their party, Ms. Finch, is transformed and is lost from their lives. The descriptions of what the party sees is interesting, but the tale fails to achieve its impact because those sights leave no room to really care for those watching them, leaving of the party member's disappearance an unmoving event.

The truly obvious results of idea-driven writing are the curious that become increasingly common as the collection goes on. These are, for the most part, successful. Most, like Strange Little Girls or 15 Cards from the Vampire Tarot, illustrate a single mood or idea, then fade away before losing their welcome. The only one of these that felt unnecessary was Diseasemaker's Croup, which, while clever, is just too insubstantial to be really interesting.

Of course, Gaiman's output here is far too diverse to be so simply summed up, so How to Talk to Girls at Parties and How Do You Think This Feels? pop up to lay to waste the concepts-in-center-stage theory. The former is a very funny story about a teenage boy going to a party and being too oblivious to catch the girls' hints that they aren't from earth at all. The narrator's, and the story's, cheeky refusal to every get the point is surprisingly endearing. The second of those, however, is probably the weakest story in the collection. In it, the narrator is left by his mistress and creates a gargoyle to guard his heart in an attempt to never again feel hurt. The problem with the story is that the supernatural element is so slight, and the mundane too generic, for there to be anything to ever catch fire.

Despite how much time I've spent talking about potential drawbacks, Gaiman's flights of fancy are the core of his work, and his refusal to reign them in is pretty much the soul of the man's writing. His ability to let his ideas stand on their own, presenting the character's and the situation without the need to constantly shape the reader's opinion, allows some of the collection's pieces, such as Keepsakes and Treasures, which only works due to Gaiman allowing the reader, not the author, to be the judge of the character, or in October's Chair, which is either an unsettling story of losing touch with reality and a painful and needless death, or a heartwarming story of escape and embracing the fullness of life.

The poetry's inclusion here was evidently quite controversial, and I'm glad that it made its way inside in the end. Gaiman's prose is almost always deliberate and light, obscuring great depth with an airy surface and true wit, and his rhythmic tendencies come to the fore for the poetic part of this collection, the cadence of the words creating an irresistible and enchanting feel:

"If I were young as once I was, and dreams
and death more distant then,
I wouldn't split my soul in two, and keep
half in the world of men,
So half of me would stay at home, and
strive for Faerie in vain" (p. 27, The Fairly Reel)

So far this review has never tackled the entirety of Fragile Things, or even made much of an attempt to do so. Some stories are like this, some are like that, some aren't like that...but wait, surely it must have more cohesion than that? Surely the collection (unlike this review) was not a mere scattershot assembly of random pieces, worthy and unworthy? Well, rest assured, because Gaiman is one of the best collection editors I've ever read. What I mean is that, even if a particular story didn't work for me, every tale still bolstered the whole. This is a compendium of odds and bits, yes, and there are new characters in (almost) every story, yeah, and new worlds, etc, but there is not a single point in the entire collection when Gaiman says: "Alright, hold on for a second, I'm going to go change gears." Every word of Fragile Things flows into the next, across line breaks and story breaks and genre lines, and the balance with which the man paces insures that you'll never want to put the book down, no matter how many pages you've just turned and how many tales you've just completed.

This is, like any short story collection, a tad uneven. Still, there are three mind blowing Bitter Grounds pieces for every one How Do You Think This Feels?, and Gaiman shows no fear when he takes us into a new place with each page, each destination both bizarre and familiar. This collection has quite a bit of essential material for any Gaiman fan.

Standouts: Harlequin Valentine, Bitter Grounds, October in the Chair, the Fairy Reel

In listening to Fragile Things, I found that Gaiman's strength is not necessarily is writing skill.

No, the man is a storyteller first and foremost. His literal voice matches his written "voice" for telling a tale.

Fragile Things is a wonderful collection of short stories -- tender and horrifying, hilarious and sad. Being an American Gods fan and very fond of Shadow, I especially liked the last novella, The Monarch of the Glen.

A Study in Emerald is sure to delight any Holmsian, and there are many other stories that will make you twitch, shiver or smile tenderly.

I encourage anyone who enjoys audiobooks to buy this with the wide eyes and open heart of a kid who looks up saying, "Tell me a story!"

*grin* Lucky Maddy, Holly and Michael...

"One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless.

The tale is the map which is the territory.

You must remember this." (p. XIX, the Mapmaker)

Fragile Things is Neil Gaiman's second collection and my first experience with his short fiction. These stories are wildly disparate, ranging from the bleak to the jubilant, and the majority of these stories function by throwing the narrator into contact with some other world, be it a literal one or the simple breath of wonder into an otherwise ordinary life. This is surely not the first time that Gaiman's tackled the theme - in fact, it's no secret that almost all of his works boil down to "normal bloke discovers magical world" - but the number of different ways that the same general idea can be reached from is simply staggering.

One of Gaiman's techniques here comes not from showing us the point of the story via the world building, but rather via said world building's deconstruction, putting the story's soul in the violation of the initially established principles, the process of exposing a loophole or intricacy that we didn't first grasp. This warping of the rules - a game that doesn't so much violate the initial promise to the reader but rather twists it until the result is utterly unrecognizable but thoroughly satisfying - can be found in a good number of the collection's stories. Harlequin Valentine begin with our viewpoint harlequin affixing his heart to his Columbine's door, and when she opens the door, we get underway. The story is a quick and witty affair, consisting of the Harlequin's toying with his one-day valentine and messing with the lives of everyone that he encounters as he follows her. At this point, the reader thinks that they understand the rules, but they've got no idea. It's at the end of the story, where the harlequin's love has a consequence unexpected enough to shatter everything we know about how the story's cosmos function, that the tale goes from whimsical to powerful.

Not every story in the collection ends in a twist, but almost every one does mess with the reader's perceptions and expectations. At the end of Harlequin Valentine, the former Columbine says: "'That's the joy of a harlequinade, after all, isn't it? We change our costumes. We change our roles.'" (p. 174, Harlequin Valentine) Almost every story in the collection, and almost every character in those stories, is a slippery being, refusing to settle into clichés or expectations. Bitter Grounds is a story of shifting identity, and as the narrator drifts further and further away from whom he was, the tone morphs to accompany his shift. Keepsakes and Treasures, a dark and dreary tale, takes a second out of its forward progress to point out that, if not for the oppressive prose and characterization, we'd be reading a fairy tale: "I told him I thought it sounded like something from a story book. 'I mean, think about it. A race of people whose only asset is the beauty of their men. So every century they sell one of their men for enough money to keep the tribe going for another hundred years.'" (p. 128, Keepsakes and Treasures)

One of the most interesting stories from the collection, and 2004's Hugo winner, A Study in Emerald, is impossible to predict from start to finish. It is, as Gaiman explains in the introduction, an attempt to wed the rationality of Sherlock Holmes with the otherworldly unknowability of Lovecraft's horrors. Stephen R. Donaldson (and Writing Excuses) has talked often about how fiction is a combination of the familiar and the unfamiliar, and the reason that A Study of Emerald is so weird in Gaiman's catalog is that the magic is actually the familiar, here. Though the two ingredients seem as likely to combine well as peanut butter and cheese, the mixture actually works, and neither element of the story feels forced...and yet I did not love A Study in Emerald, and the reason why is the problem I have with some of the stories in this collection.

Neil Gaiman is a writer of ideas, and they are fabulous ideas, big and witty and wondrous. The problem is, when ideas of that caliber get down in the trenches, they occasionally push other parts of the story aside. This works at times, like in the aforementioned Harlequin Valentine, when the torrent of bizarre ideas and imagery leads to a great emotional moment, but it can also lead to stories where you can admire what Gaiman's done, but can't really enjoy the result all that much.

The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch suffers quite badly from this. The story is a about a small group of friends and acquaintances who are taken on a tour of ten increasingly bizarre rooms. As they go, one of their party, Ms. Finch, is transformed and is lost from their lives. The descriptions of what the party sees is interesting, but the tale fails to achieve its impact because those sights leave no room to really care for those watching them, leaving of the party member's disappearance an unmoving event.

The truly obvious results of idea-driven writing are the curious that become increasingly common as the collection goes on. These are, for the most part, successful. Most, like Strange Little Girls or 15 Cards from the Vampire Tarot, illustrate a single mood or idea, then fade away before losing their welcome. The only one of these that felt unnecessary was Diseasemaker's Croup, which, while clever, is just too insubstantial to be really interesting.

Of course, Gaiman's output here is far too diverse to be so simply summed up, so How to Talk to Girls at Parties and How Do You Think This Feels? pop up to lay to waste the concepts-in-center-stage theory. The former is a very funny story about a teenage boy going to a party and being too oblivious to catch the girls' hints that they aren't from earth at all. The narrator's, and the story's, cheeky refusal to every get the point is surprisingly endearing. The second of those, however, is probably the weakest story in the collection. In it, the narrator is left by his mistress and creates a gargoyle to guard his heart in an attempt to never again feel hurt. The problem with the story is that the supernatural element is so slight, and the mundane too generic, for there to be anything to ever catch fire.

Despite how much time I've spent talking about potential drawbacks, Gaiman's flights of fancy are the core of his work, and his refusal to reign them in is pretty much the soul of the man's writing. His ability to let his ideas stand on their own, presenting the character's and the situation without the need to constantly shape the reader's opinion, allows some of the collection's pieces, such as Keepsakes and Treasures, which only works due to Gaiman allowing the reader, not the author, to be the judge of the character, or in October's Chair, which is either an unsettling story of losing touch with reality and a painful and needless death, or a heartwarming story of escape and embracing the fullness of life.

The poetry's inclusion here was evidently quite controversial, and I'm glad that it made its way inside in the end. Gaiman's prose is almost always deliberate and light, obscuring great depth with an airy surface and true wit, and his rhythmic tendencies come to the fore for the poetic part of this collection, the cadence of the words creating an irresistible and enchanting feel:

"If I were young as once I was, and dreams
and death more distant then,
I wouldn't split my soul in two, and keep
half in the world of men,
So half of me would stay at home, and
strive for Faerie in vain" (p. 27, The Fairly Reel)

So far this review has never tackled the entirety of Fragile Things, or even made much of an attempt to do so. Some stories are like this, some are like that, some aren't like that...but wait, surely it must have more cohesion than that? Surely the collection (unlike this review) was not a mere scattershot assembly of random pieces, worthy and unworthy? Well, rest assured, because Gaiman is one of the best collection editors I've ever read. What I mean is that, even if a particular story didn't work for me, every tale still bolstered the whole. This is a compendium of odds and bits, yes, and there are new characters in (almost) every story, yeah, and new worlds, etc, but there is not a single point in the entire collection when Gaiman says: "Alright, hold on for a second, I'm going to go change gears." Every word of Fragile Things flows into the next, across line breaks and story breaks and genre lines, and the balance with which the man paces insures that you'll never want to put the book down, no matter how many pages you've just turned and how many tales you've just completed.

This is, like any short story collection, a tad uneven. Still, there are three mind blowing Bitter Grounds pieces for every one How Do You Think This Feels?, and Gaiman shows no fear when he takes us into a new place with each page, each destination both bizarre and familiar. This collection has quite a bit of essential material for any Gaiman fan.

Standouts: Harlequin Valentine, Bitter Grounds, October in the Chair, the Fairy Reel

In this short story collection, Neil Gaiman compiles various fast-paced stories (and a few poems) from over the decades. Some of them are very good; others didn't really work. But that's the beauty of a short story collection--if you don't like one story, there's a new one just a few pages ahead. By and large, however, Gaiman's stories were darkly imaginative, quirky, and--most importantly--fun. Some weren't up to his usual high standards, and he's the first to admit as much in his "notes" section where he offers some insight into each tale.

If you're a fan of Gaiman and/or short fantasy, horror, and sci-fi, I think this collection will please.

~Scott William Foley, author of The Imagination's Provocation: Volume I: A Collection of Short Stories

Many of these stories are reprints from other works - anthologies and the like. This is not a hidden fact; read the prelude and you'll see right away the pub dates on the stories are vast. Yet, if you're looking for new fiction, you might think this is. It isn't.

It's also classic Gaiman. The stories are such an intriguing mix of the mundane and the bizarre. He is a craftsman and words are his medium. His work is so lyrical that poems, something I almost never read, are very entertaining.

In short; if you like Gaiman and don't read a lot of anthologies, give this a try. If you read a lot of side works, get it from the library, or you might be wasting $$ on stuff that you already bought.

(*)>

Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors, period. Lamentably, this collection suffers a bit from a bunch of stories that are not up to par with his previous works or his prodigious talents. Perhaps these weaker stories have been thrown in to fatten the collection for the sake of page volume. Nonetheless, there are several stories which are classic Gaiman and make it a worthwhile read. The standout stories are: "A Study in Emerald", "October in the Chair", "Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire", "Closing Time", "Bitter Grounds", "Keepsakes and Treasures", "Good Boys Deserve Favors", "The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch", "Feeders and Eaters", "How to Talk to Girls at Parties", "Sunbird", and "The Monarch of the Glen".

Other readers recommended Gaiman as a follow up to Murakami. When I saw Gaiman's connection to Terri Pratchett, I knew I would like his books. This one takes the reader inside the mind where nothing is as it appears. An escape from what most people call real life. If you believe that dream worlds are the real life, you will enjoy entering the stories Gaiman tells.

What a joy to read. This short collection really hints at the range of which he's capable. In one collection I've enjoyed his evocation of Sherlock Holmes, his adaptations of fairy tales and his well done portrayals of the awkwardness of growing up, to name a few.

There are some really gruesome stories, some tenderness, a small bit of heroism, and a lot of inventiveness and wonder. Is it sci-fi? Is it horror? Fantasy? Are these fairy tales? Yes, yes, yes. Many of the stories hint at epics that could be unwound to novels (he says in his intro that The Monarch of the Glen is in part a revisit with one of his characters from American Gods) while others are little standalone jewels that shouldn't (can't possibly!) be expanded. There's a lot of magic in his stories and I can't wait to read some of these to or with my daughter when she's 9 or 10 years old.

Finally there's a lot of fun in recognizing allusions both overt and oblique. I can't imagine I caught them all but for the ones I did it's clear that it's not necessary to catch them as much as it's clear that there are many homages.

My sweet boyfriend, knowing my penchant for all things Neil Gaiman, bought me Fragile Things almost the moment it came out. The book is a collection of stories, poetry, and whatnot that I have to recommend incredibly highly -- but you have to be ready for things to be not quite what they seem and for the need to actually think as you read. I happen to love how he turns stories on their heads and always has a twist that you're not precisely ready for. Of course, the difficulty for me in reviewing these stories is to show their brilliance so you'll go read them, without giving away any of the fun of reading them.

First, I've got to say that I'm entranced by the cover, which is translucent white paper over a white cover with, well, fragile things on it, such as a butterfly, a snowflake, and a human heart. Notice how that last one sneaks up on you? What a perfect warning (or appetite whetting) for how Gaiman's stories sneak up on you.

As a fan of his earlier work, American Gods, I started with the novella "Monarch of the Glen," which picks back up with Shadow, the main character of that novel. Shadow's been doing some travel and has ended up in middle-of-nowhere Scotland. As you might imagine if you've read American Gods, someone improbable asks Shadow to take a job as a, well, let's call it security enforcer. Except of course that the castle in which he's supposed to perform this task for a large party of very wealthy people isn't on any of the survey maps. Add to that a woman named Jennie who isn't what she seems and doesn't want Shadow to take this job, and we're already on the way to another scrunched up forehead, feverish reading moment.

In "Sunbird," we get to meet the members of the Epicurean Club, including Augustus TwoFeathers McCoy (and his daughter Hollyberry NoFeathers McCoy), who ate and drank enough for many men; Professor Mandalay, who one was never quite sure was really there; Jackie Newhouse, a descendant of Casanova; Virginia Boote, a now-ruined beauty; and, of course, Zebediah T. Crawcrustle, the poorest member of the club, who'd been around since, well, nobody's quite sure. At the moment when the club is sure they've tried every food there is to try, from vulture, to beetle (although not quite every kind of beetle), to panda and mammoth, Crawcrustle suggests that grilled Sunbird hasn't been done in a long time, and they would definitely enjoy it. So, they make preparations to go catch and eat the Sunbird (one has to go to Cairo to do so, you know), but Crawcrustle may have left out one or two small details in how the whole process works.

Don't miss Gaiman's take on the legend of Bluebeard in "The Hidden Chamber." One of my favorite types of book or story to read is one that takes a myth, legend, or tale that we all know, in one version, and goes farther or deeper with it. I think part of what I like is knowing some background - I like feeling intelligent after all -- but not reading exactly the same story over again. Gaiman is a master at this -- "Monarch of the Glen" does it in more ways than even the obvious one of the Norse legends that Shadow and his boss Wednesday arose from, "The Problem of Susan" and "Inventing Aladdin" do this in another way, and "The Hidden Chamber" takes yet another direction in re-imagining Bluebeard.

Many of the stories are not brand new, although they've not been collected together before and you would have had to go far and wide to capture them all. One favorite example is "The Problem of Susan," which pays homage to, and deals with some difficult issues in, C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. I also enjoyed getting reacquainted with "A Study in Emerald," which combines Gaiman's sense of humor and the irrationality (as he puts it) of H.P. Lovecraft, with the utter rationality (again, Gaiman's sense) of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. The story won a Hugo, which was quite enough recommendation for me, but also evokes a just slightly not our Victorian England in a way that made me think of the best of "Doctor Who" or Robert Heinlein.

In any case, all the stories I've savored have been delicious and the Epicureans would've been coming back for seconds or thirds had this been on their plates. Enjoy.

OK, I know I said in another review that everything Gaiman writes is terrific. Some of these stories were only extremely good. If you where not going to read everything he has written, like me, you should choose a different short story collection, or one f his children's books or one of his novels.

After reading his other short story collection and finding it a little too light and fanciful, I was skeptical of a collection called "Fragile Things". I was wrong. Bottom line: I liked this collection more overall because there were more "horror" and creepy tales. Not everything was fantastic, but the key word whenever it comes to Neil is Variety. It's hard to classify his work because his writing draws from so many influences and styles. Highlights for me were: A Study in Emerald, Forbidden Brides..., Bitter Grounds, Keepsakes and Treasures, Closing Time, Feeders and Eaters and Other People.

I don't usually buy short story collections. I prefer stories that are novel-length and captivate my attention for long periods of time, so I was surprised when I couldn't put this book down. Each of the stories in this collection reminded me that sometimes it doesn't take 500 pages to tell a good yarn. While some are better than others, they were all brilliant in a way only Neil can create.

I did expect it to be more on the fantasy side, and was surprised to find that a lot of these stories border on the edge of horror. There were times when I felt vaguely "upsettled."

There are parts of this book that are graphic, and there are parts that are downright disturbing. While I wouldn't want to classify it as pure horror, people who are a little squeamish might not enjoy it as much as I personally did.

It is a collection of previously printed stories, so some of them may be familiar, especially for other fans of Neil. But I recommend this for anyone, whether they're long time fans or newcomers.

Neil Gaiman has gotten a lot of attention in recent years, and yet the first time I heard him on NPR I remember being disappointed by what he had to say. Still, when my book group chose FRAGILE THINGS as our next selection, I must say that I was rather looking forward to it. And, if I wasn't initially swept away, I was at least pleasantly amused by Gaiman's retelling of a classic Sherlock Holmes story--the first in this collection. Yet, looking back at my notes, I can see that my amusement did not last long.

Very early on in this anthology one cannot help but notice the constant self-reflection, the self-consciousness. That is to say, far too many of these stories talk ABOUT storytelling instead of just telling the darn story. As a result, just as you find yourself drawn into a tale, the author or his narrator intrude, reminding you that you are reading a story. Now, some authors can get away with this--Italo Calvino, for example--but here the effect is simply disruptive.

Other problems are more difficult to pinpoint. I had already gone through ten or more of the stories before I realized that not a single one of them had left an impression on me. I couldn't remember the characters, the plots. Almost as quickly as I read the stories, I forgot them. Can you imagine saying the same thing after reading shorts by Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, JG Ballard, Joyce Carol Oates?

By the time I had finished "The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch" I was truly frustrated. Violence and perversity certainly have a place in art and literature, but only if they are justified by the plot and characterization. I don't believe in "perversity for perversity's sake" any more than I believe in "art for art's sake" --and for the same reasons that Nietzsche spelled out a century ago. So, when in Gaiman's stories a logical sequence of events cannot be discerned, and when the characters are grossly under-developed, the violence and perversity risk being gratuitous.

In the case of "Miss Finch," we never get to know the character well enough to care what happens to her one way or another. And while the freakshow the characters are subjected to was enough to string me along, by the time I turned to the last page I was shocked to realize that the story had no climax. (Indeed, most of them do not.) Moreover, the story has so many loose ends that it is not so much open-ended as it is unfinished. Who was Miss Finch? What exactly was her wish? Is it important that one of the female performers has track marks on her arms from drug use? Did the cyclist break his leg or not? Should we care?

In a well-written short story nothing is left to chance; every word, every detail should count. Instead, with Gaiman one is left with the impression that he himself is unsure which details matter. EM Forster once said that "the writer expects the reader to have a good memory. The reader expects the writer to leave no loose ends." I really feel as though in many of these short stories Gaiman lets the reader down. The result is not so much a collection of stories, but of moods--mostly morbid, sometimes cynical, generally unpleasant.

In "Keepsakes and Treasures" a young thug procures a mythically beautiful boy for a paternal sodomite; the boy dies. In the story "Other People," a man goes to hell and is tortured. And tortured. And tortured again. Then he does the torturing. In "Good Boys Deserve Favors," a schoolboy discovers that he has an incredible, innate talent for the double bass. Then he quits playing.

Myself, I tend to have a predilection for the macabre, but in the case of this collection by Gaiman, the stories and their characters are not so much fragile as they are, well, broken ... and repugnant.

A very disappointing collection, I am truly sorry to say.