English expatriate Neil Gaiman has arguably
received the most attention for fantasy novels like American Gods and Anansi Boys, whose success raised him
from genre obscurity to a space on the bestseller lists near Stephen King and
J.K. Rowling. But he's had a knack for the short story ever since his work on
the Sandman
comic series–a format that rewards the ability to say everything that needs to
be said in 24 pages of large illustrated panels and short word balloons.
Fragile Things, Gaiman's third
short-story collection, is probably best viewed as a collection of B-sides
rather than any kind of unified artistic statement. The works here include
short poems, a novella-length American Gods sequel, and stories
compiled from far-flung anthologies, including one written to illustrate a
photograph of a sock monkey. So it's understandable that some pieces are more
consequential than others. Still, even the trifles are engagingly written, such
as "Strange Little Girls," a set of brief character sketches written for his
friend Tori Amos, as liner notes to her 2001 album of the same name. The
similar "Fifteen Painted Cards From A Vampire Tarot" seems even more like a
warm-up writing exercise published prematurely, especially since Gaiman admits
there are seven more cards yet to be written about.
That isn't to say that the 31 pieces here
(32, counting one tucked away in Gaiman's introduction) are all oddments. The
Hugo-winning "A Study In Emerald" cleverly interweaves the worlds of Arthur
Conan Doyle and H.P. Lovecraft by re-imagining Sherlock Holmes' debut mystery
in a Victorian England ruled by Cthulhu and its brethren. Another
Lovecraft-inspired gem plants a character inspired by P.G. Wodehouse's Bertie
Wooster in a world of wittily overstuffed gothic horror, and follows his frustrated
attempts to write "serious" fiction to a satisfyingly logical conclusion. And
it might seem odd that one of the best stories here, "Goliath," was written
for-hire to help promote the first Matrix movie, but Gaiman has a facility for
putting his own twist on other people's invented worlds, especially when he's
given the freedom to explore on his own terms. Though Fragile Things' odds-and-ends nature
inevitably makes it disjointed, it's also a good showcase for the breadth of
Gaiman's darkly whimsical imagination, wry humor, and penchant for elegantly
creepy horror.