Becky's Reviews > Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

I really enjoyed this collection of stories. I listened to the audiobook version read by the author himself, which I think added quite a bit to the experience. It's been my experience that authors who read their own stories as audiobooks are generally not the best. While it's true that they know their characters and their stories, many of them just don't have the voice or talent for oral storytelling. That's not to say that the author isn't a storyteller - obviously they are, often they just shouldn't do it orally.

Neil Gaiman, thankfully, is a natural oral storyteller. He brings the story and the characters to life, and the listener forgets that they are listening to something that was once written because it feels so naturally spoken -- like the story is just flowing through him to us.

Many of these stories took me by surprise. I don't think of Gaiman as a YA author, but even so, I didn't expect the themes and details of the stories in this collection to be so jaded or brutal. Gaiman doesn't make these things the focus, but rather adds them in an almost nonchalant way that has more of an impact because it's NOT the focus.

I also really enjoy Gaiman's perspective and unique way of seeing the world and everything in it. I like his ability to effortlessly maneuver his readers right into the position we need to be in for maximum effect, and when we get there, he flips everything, so we're left wondering just what happened and how we got where we are when obviously we were just on our way to somewhere else.

I'm not much for poetry, and I didn't really get much out of the poems that were included here, so I couldn't give this one a 5 star rating, but aside from that, I loved this collection. It's a keeper.