Smoke and Mirrors
71. Neil Gaiman, Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions
This collection of short stories, plus a few poems, showcases some of Neil Gaiman’s early work. As the title suggests, magic is a prominent theme in the collection. There are too many stories to give summaries of each one, so instead I can only give my general impressions of the work as a whole. This seems unsatisfactory, because there’s a lot that could be said about each individual entry in the collection. Nonetheless, I can only say that I was left with a general impression of disturbing, thought-provoking stories that explored various aspects of the sacred and profane.
This book the third I’ve read by Neil Gaiman, after Stardust and Neverwhere, and I’m still not sure whether I’d consider myself a fan. Many of these stories were disturbing to me, and I felt a vague sense of wrongness about a lot of them. Also, I don’t think there’s a single happily-ever-after in this collection. Although I can deal with sad and ambiguous endings, reading more than 30 of them in a row gets a bit draining! Objectively, however, I have to say that this book is very good. The writing is magical and mysterious, and I enjoyed the clever little jokes interspersed throughout the collection (“Bay Wolf” made me smile). One of the stories, “The Price,” gave me chills. This book wasn’t exactly my usual fare, but it certainly gave me a lot of food for thought.