Coraline, written by Neil Gaimain and published by Scholastic, is a third-person novel told from the point-of-view of Coraline Jones, a 12-year-old girl with a penchant for curiosity to subdue her immense boredom. It’s not as though she has an attention disorder, but more so that her boredom is an extension of her loneliness, living in a home with two parents who are constantly working and giving little, if no, attention to her. As a result, Coraline borders on having depressive disorders and finds solace in a mysterious door that carries her to an alternate reality, where her “other” parents really do devote all their time to her--only her other parents have buttons sewn over their eyes. As Coraline becomes absorbed in their generosity, her curious nature leads to uncovering the deep, dark secrets of these new found beings, who look and sound exactly like her own parents, but aren’t.
I found this book mysteriously left upon the end table next to the front door to my apartment. Apparently, my roommate’s ex-girlfriend had left it there, and for no other reason than because it was there, I chose to read it. I’d heard of the animated film, but I had no idea that Neil Gaiman wrote it, and with two Neil Gaiman books under my belt already (Good Omens and Stardust), I thought I’d immerse myself into another one of his mysterious little fables. Here’s a trend that I’m beginning to notice about Neil Gaiman--he likes to write from the point-of-view of children. A lot. Whether it’s Tristan Thorn of Stardust or Adam Young of Good Omens, Gaiman likes to envelope us in the perceptions of precious youth in order to, by my best measure, manipulate the suspension of reality. After all, if you throw an adult male into fantastical circumstances, profanity won’t be the only thing that takes the magic out of it--adults just don’t have that same hopeful, insistent curiosity as the naive do. And with each story baring the narrative arc of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, it only makes sense to follow in Carroll’s footsteps by creating characters who are, intrinsically, curious, longing, and somewhat unhappy. Take, for instance, Tristan Thorn, who is driven by loneliness, by a sense that he doesn’t necessarily belong. Or Adam Young, who sees the havoc left by adults and is compelled to “fix” the world, immersed in all its forgotten curiosities. Coraline’s no different--though she’s spoiled, she’s lonely, and it’s that loneliness that drives her into her own adventure, one that simply reeks of Gaiman’s fabulous invention.
(Coraline, as depicted in the film of the same name.)
Gaiman’s strengths begin with establishing why Coraline is unhappy--she’s just moved, she has no friends, no peers, and only a spattering of adults to keep her company, in addition to a snooty black cat. She’s creative, yes, but she’s outgrown her toys and videos, and has little to no interest in television. Her parents are relatively distant, workaholics, and her neighbors are strange, but not in a comforting sort-of-way. Besides, they constantly mispronounce her name. Her father likes to cook unique meals, but out of rebellion for her parents more than disinterest, Coraline wants nothing to do with them, wishing they’d make traditional foods, wishing she had a traditional family dynamic. Instead, she wanders, she explores, and when all-else fails, she invents repetitive counting games in order to occupy the long stretches of down time. This isn’t a girl who’s just bored--this is a girl with no one to express herself to, no one to listen to her pleas for companionship, during a time when she’s developing into an individual. She’s maladjusted, which results in a spoiled attitude where she throws a fit whenever she doesn’t get what she wants, no matter how ridiculous it might seem to want it. It’s an extension of her desire for attention, her development as a unique individual, and without any means of expressing herself, it’s no surprise that she follows her exploratory discoveries at the cost of leaving her family behind, though it’s not as though she doesn’t love her mother and father--it’s only because she doesn’t realize how much she loves them and she’s forgotten how much they love her.
The use of children isn’t the only thing that ties Gaiman’s work together. He likes to give organic traits to inanimate objects too. Tristan Thorn, upon entering Faerie, finds himself among living forests, and while some trees attempt to devour him, others help him in his travels. Oh, right, and he dates a fallen star. In Good Omens, Newt’s car, the Wasabi, almost has a personality of its own, while trees (again) grow violently in conflict against humanity. However, these are small aspects, compared those found in Coraline, where the tunnel between the mundane world and the other world has a life of its own.
“Whatever that corridor was was older by far than the other mother. It was deep, and slow, and it knew she was there...”
Even Coraline’s toys in the other world take life of their own.
“...wind up angels that fluttered around the room like startled sparrows, books with pictures that writhed and crawled and shimmered; little dinosaur skulls that chattered their teeth as she passed.”
Even marbles and snow globes in Coraline’s other home have souls. This sense of mysticism, by giving life to otherwise inanimate objects, doesn’t just give this fable its own unique sense of magical realism, but characterizes Gaiman’s style in his dream-like perception of reality, creating yet another theme that encompasses his work.
(It ain’t just fun and games anymore.)
A strength of this work alone is Gaiman’s use of opposites. Normally, most authors will place a protagonist against an opposite of the protagonist. In this case, however, Gaiman uses opposites of other characters in Coraline’s world. Though the other mother is more affectionate than Coraline’s own mother, she’s also manipulative, controlling, and (frankly) demonic, where as Coraline’s own mother is, at worst, simply condescending and neglectful. Coraline’s father is distant, but he’s also creative, and in fact, strong, willing to face all odds to protect his daughter, while her other father is submissive, focused on engorging Coraline as opposed to protecting her. These extreme differences are not necessarily full on opposites, but distortions of characters that define their personalities, each pushed to the extreme, twisted, and given violent edges in an effort to unmake Coraline in her exploration of the other world. Likewise, the mice are transformed into rats, her elderly neighbors are given theatrical youth, and the house, itself, is built on weaker foundations, almost to the point where it could vanish in an instant. The other world isn’t just an opposite world, but a world where everything is the same but different, reshaped to create a macabre perception of the regular elements in Coraline’s ordinary life, as a way to create a conflict that not only pushes the story forward, but engages its audience to guess at the transformations before they come into the story, and re-imagine unique elements in their own life that they give little thought to and twist them into a nightmarish doppelganger of their mundane experience.
Like Gaiman’s habit of giving life to inanimate objects, Gaiman’s no stranger to anthropomorphism either. Tristan Thorn encounters a small, furry friend on his adventure into Faerie who had once sought shelter with his father. In addition to that, he’s given protection by a loyal unicorn after saving its life from a lion. In Good Omens, Adam Young is followed around by a hellhound who has been twisted and reinvented into a small, obedient puppy that follows him around and grows adept at chasing cats or its own tail. This hellhound, who comes to be known simply as Dog, reconsiders its own desire for the apocalypse as it grows closer to Adam, at some moments growing scared of Adam’s immense powers. Coraline Jones first encounters anthropomorphism when the mice in her up-stair neighbor’s circus try to warn her about entering the other world. After she does though, it’s the cat, who initially acts too haughty for Coraline, that pairs with her in order to defeat the other mother. Even the rats are given personality, and in some form, even given human shape as they pose as Coraline’s up-stair neighbor in order to prevent her from rescuing her friends and family from the other mother. Like giving life to objects, giving life and personality and even dialogue to animals creates a sense of magical-realism while also making the protagonist seem more empathetic, or in some cases, using those animals and their revolting nature to create further tumult. After all, it’s the lion in Tristan’s world that’s trying to kill the unicorn, and Adam’s hellhound came to earth with every intention to destroy it. Even Coraline faces intelligent rats and flying dogs in the twisted manipulation of her reality, and in this facet, Gaimain isn’t just making every furry creature in his story an empathetic character--after all, not all humans are good. Why should all animals be too? In that sense, it not only supports the strong magical reality the story is set within, but becomes an analysis on the human condition through animals and their interactions with humans.
(This cat is also the POTUS on Rick & Morty.)
I think what makes this book the most fun is how clever Coraline is. Tristan and Adam both showed the same sense of acute circumstantial wit to get out of rough situations, but Coraline does so differently. While Adam drew new conclusions or while Tristan made smart, spontaneous choices, it’s Coraline’s planning to get out of her desperate situations that makes her character so full and makes this story so engaging. She doesn’t just act on a whim to handle her problems, but she negotiates with her enemies, setting stakes as part of an elaborate, mental chess game against her opponents, who underestimate her with good reason, since she’s fairly powerless and still a child. When cornered, she doesn’t just react to get out of a situation, she uses the tools around her (including the cat), in order to escape or overcome obstacles. At one point, she even creates an elaborate show of pretend playing with the dolls she’d grown too old for, an act to be purposefully caught unawares so that she can spring a trap. Gaiman doesn’t go out of his way to tell us what she’s planning--he leads us with clues, but it’s the surprise of her plans, her schemes, that really make the payoff of this story. He puts us in her mind, a mind that doubts whether any of these ideas will actually work, and unveils them with varying successes depending on the circumstances surrounding her plan. But it’s that planning that makes this character so strong, so memorable, and makes this story so engaging.
As I read more of Gaiman’s works, it’s not simply the ongoing themes that keep attracting me back--it’s because of his continued evolution of his perception of the magical, the fabulous, and the mysteries surrounding the world and what we don’t know about it. With each new work, he strengthens it more and more, and as I continue reading on, I can’t help but wonder if all these stories are connected in some way, if some overarching magical force has touched the presence of all the lives of all of his characters. Either way, I have no intention to stop reading--just call it curiosity.
The Riahi Rating:
★★★★★
5/5 stars.
(Yo’ mama is so scary...)
And there’s a movie!:
Coraline was made into a feature-length, stop-motion picture, directed by Henry Selick, director of The Nightmare before Christmas. This film’s strengths are in its acting and animation--Dakota Fanning and Keith David can make anything work, and Henry Selick perceives everything so beautifully while capturing the dark, twisted tone of the original narrative. While these strengths are easy to recognize, Selick’s failures with the piece are even easier to notice. Much of the story is told outside of the chronology that Gaiman originally introduced, and though that’s not necessarily a weakness, it does weaken the overall tension of the story after Coraline gets trapped in the other world. The introduction of a male counterpart to Coraline, named Wybie (short for Why-Born?) demeans Coraline’s creative use to get out of trouble as he voices her thoughts and acts as a hero to save her from trouble, in spite of how inept we’re meant to perceive him. It screams of something misogynistic, really, in that Coraline needs this pathetic boy in order to rescue her, as a way to engage the audiences in a stunted, childlike romance that peters out and serves no purpose. Further weakness is the downgrade of how twisted the other world actually is. While Coraline is faced with amorphous blobs that represent the people she knew from her original world in the book, they’re given less macabre characteristics in the film, overall creating a weaker threat and a pitiable effort to capture what Gaiman wrote so goddamn well. Honestly, the film makes a decent supplement to the book, but it could’ve made a much better one had the director not endeavored to play it safe.
About the publisher:
You’ve been buying Scholastic books since you were a kid, I’d wager. I know I have. They’re the biggest publisher of children’s books, and they’re not directly affiliated with Random House, Penguin, or any of the other big publishers. But there is the catch: you’ll need an agent. That is, unless, you’re submitting teaching guides or work to publish on their website (meant to encourage people to write more), Write It. They’ll publish anything without adult themes though, so it’s not exactly like you’re setting the bar high on that one.
