Spoilers!
I really enjoyed this book! At 30,826 words I think it makes more sense to call it a novella than a short story. I think my favourite aspect of Gaiman’s writing in this work is the tone (I’m now on my third Gaiman book, and that seems to be one of his foremost skills). Our world is shown in all its mundanity, and Gaiman lets the action and dialogue speak for itself, communicating a small, rather dull world wherein Coraline’s parents leave her, somewhat neglectfully, to her own imagination. I find it hard to communicate boredom in a way that isn’t boring, but Gaiman did a good job of it. Maybe it was the ever present conflict in relation to Coraline that made the boredom so interesting. Coraline wants to explore, but is soon confined to her flat. She wants her parents to spend time with her, but they are consumed by chores, work, etc. She wants the neighbours to pay attention to her, but Ms. Spink and Ms. Forcible are too busy rehashing the past to remember her name, and Mr. Bobo is too focused on his work to pay attention to her name. This conflict also helps us understand her wandering into another world (but honestly, who wouldn’t?), and enhances one of the main themes: that this world and its inhabitants are imperfect, yet still real—and when something is real then there is more to it than meets the eye. Her parents do care for her, and not just superficially—her father’s ‘recipe’ meals are acts of love, and he learns to show more affection toward her, picking her up and carrying her, by paying attention to her affection towards him (I also loved that she learns to show affection to others—her parents, Ms. Spink and Ms. Forcible—without them needing to be perfect in love towards her).
The Real & the Evil
Gaiman highlights the beauty of this world by taking us and Coraline to a pseudo-world. While ours felt small and mundane, it really is immense, whereas the beldam’s world is tiny and shrinks throughout the story. Coraline’s parents were imperfect and somewhat neglectful, yet they cared for her and were real, whereas the Beldam ‘loved Coraline as a miser loves money, or a dragon loves its gold,’ and her whole world and its inhabitants are puppets. In our world, Ms. Spink and Ms. Forcible were repetitive and self-absorbed, and Mr. Bobo odd and mouse-absorbed, yet they were at least real selves. Moreover, there was (there always is) more to them than meets the eye—the sisters could actually read tea leaves and possessed a powerful talisman, and Mr. Bobo can communicate with mice and tries to warn ‘Caroline’. And Mr. Bobo is able to change, finally learning Coraline’s name and gaining new respect for her.
The theme of evil having only the ability to copy and twist without being able to create is, like all good themes, an old one, and one that Gaiman used well here. The idea of a young girl finding a hidden world behind a seemingly ordinary door, but that world being a poor, twisted copy of this one, caught and kept my attention. It implies that this whole world is good (all of the things which are—people, trees, homes, maybe cats, maybe not rats), and evil is a subtraction or twisting thereof. What is the witch of fairy stories but a cruel version of a mother or grandmother? And the one thing the beldam cannot create is the one thing it desires more than anything else: souls. Free-willed, intelligent souls that are capable of love but also capable of withholding it. The cruelty of the beldam towards the children she so craves—stealing their souls and casting away their shells—also exemplifies that evil tends to hate what it craves. The miser who has attained great wealth, not only still desires more, but is never joyful in what he has. It reminds me of Tolkien’s description of Ungoliant in The Silmarillion:
‘she hungered for light and hated it. In a ravine she lived, and took the shape as a spider of monstrous form, weaving her black webs in a cleft of the mountains. There she sucked up all light that she could find, and spun it forth again in dark nets of strangling gloom, until no light more could come to her abode; and she was famished.’
A short note on the creepiness of the story: kudos! The button eyes, the rats, the creepy rat song (which is eerie to listen to in the audiobook), the idea of having one’s eyes sewn with buttons, the blob monster that was the Other Father, and the beldam itself—with black blood, towering height, and a dismembered hand with red fingernails for claws—all was creepy enough for an adult without being mentally disturbing for a 10-year-old. Gaiman’s soft world-building and lack of exposition also helped to increase the eariness. There was some exposition, of course, but I did not think it was done poorly. The most notable scenes of exposition would be the cat’s dialogues—and he leaves much shrouded in mystery—and the Other Father’s final dialogue with Coraline. Still, much was left in mystery—like how the Beldam steals souls, why it takes their eyes, and what is the pathway between worlds—sufficing to add to the twistedness and perversion of the beldam and its world, and suggesting that there is much more to reality than just this one evil creature.
Plot & Pacing
As for the plot and pacing, I really liked it at first. Gaiman builds up at a reasonable pace, with suspenseful, anticipatory hints with the rats, the warning from the mice, and the warning in the tea leaves. Coraline enters into the world pretty quickly, and I liked that she is able to get out, but the beldam has already kidnapped her parents’ souls. And little plot points like this help us to get to know its powers without exposition. For instance, clearly the beldam can steal souls unwillingly, but for some reason what it wants from Coraline is different: it needs, or wants, her consent. Coraline’s quest later had a good amount of suspense—more suspense than action, which I liked. Although I was a little confused why she ‘knew’ that the strange man upstair’s flat would be the most dangerous place she’d been, even after the blob monster, when it seemed the only danger was her being persuaded to stay (which didn’t seem like a huge conflict for her and was resolved fairly quickly).
My main complaint with the plot and pacing was the last act, with the beldam’s hand. I think that, since Coraline hadn’t really failed in any way without escaping or being rescued by the cat, I wasn’t really afraid of a) anyone being killed by the hand, b) the hand gaining the key and the beldam coming back (the book was nearly over, and that would have been repetitive if it had happened), or c) the hand gaining the key and the story ending with the beldam maybe coming back one day (that would have been the modern horror movie ending, which I wouldn’t have liked anyway). So I guess I wish the stakes had better been established earlier on, so I’d feel more tension at the end. In some stories, there isn’t going to be tension over whether the main character is going to die (like in a first-person past narrative), but there can be tension over whether someone else will die, or whether they’ll be maimed, or whether they’ll fail in their primary conflict or secondary conflict. I suppose there was a little tension over whether it would attack or harm anyone, but it only maimed the dog, and in the end the dog was fine—which I think lessened the danger of the hand, since it didn’t even kill a little dog. This is my main critique.
Coraline
I usually break down a story to its themes, the writing itself (which includes the plot and pacing), and the characters. I’ve already said that I thought the villain creepy and intriguing, so that leaves Coraline. I liked her from the start—she’s an adventurous young girl with a good deal of assertiveness but not much self-confidence, given the lack of attention she’s given—and I thought she had good growth in a couple ways. First, she learns that love cannot be about use (another good theme), that her parents are imperfect but do love her, and it is right and proper for her to love them and show them affection even though they show it to her imperfectly. Second, she does grow in self-confidence, especially after her mother’s words to her in between the doorways. This self-confidence is shown in her hugging her dad, thanking Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, and inquiring after Mr. Bobo’s mice—all showing her confidence in her own goodness and worth, for now she is able to show attention to others without merely doing it so they’ll show attention to her (although they do reciprocate, as often happens in real life). Third, she learns the lesson of the wonder and largeness of this world, and that becoming bored is a choice on our part—which is demonstrated by her interest in Mr. Bobo’s mice and in trying new foods. It was a pretty simple arc, but demonstrated some important things for both children and adults, and so I thought her arc, and even more the story as a whole, well worth the time and attention.
The Curious Critic 