Warning: Reading the work of Nen Suel can seriously damage your dinner!

by Suw on July 19, 2003

There is a Rule. A new Rule. And that Rule is:

Do not read Neil Gaiman's work when you're trying to cook.

Coraline may look like a slim volume. A children's book, it may seem like light fayre for the seasoned reader. The scrawled signature inside makes you think that perhaps this book was at the bottom of a box which was at the bottom of a very large stack which Mr Suel laboriously, yet without complaint, signed his way through one long and tedious day, until his name became no longer his name, his signature no longer his signature, just a scrawl which, no matter how often he looks at it, seems strange and separated from the reality of his own name and being.

Maybe this book looks like a Cinderella of a book, unloved, unwanted. Don't let that fool you. Mr Suel really is the bastard son of Prince Charming and the Fairy Godmother (who will forever be Diana Dors), and he can draw you in, wrap you up in so many layers of fairytale that minutes become seconds and adults become children. Sure as Cinderella found true love, this book will wrap its pages around your mind until you forget that midnight's coming. You will not be able to put it down. You will not be able to just go and check to make sure that your dinner is not burning. You will not pause and take a sip of that glass of white wine, now warming in the summer evening's heat. And you certainly will not condescend to believe that this work is just for children once you have finished it.

The mice know. And the mice are never wrong.

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