Indeed, the introductory tone seemed generally designed to address some kind of perpetually wilting teenage goth. When she awoke I would bring her soup and honeyed drinks and read her what I had written of the story…” I’m just not sure how Gaiman wants us to take passages like this. I’m afraid I didn’t much enjoy the 20-odd page introduction either: “I wrote this story on the Isle of Skye, while my then girlfriend Amanda had flu and tried to sleep it off. The book opens with Making a Chair – and at the start of stanza five we get: “Making a book is a little like making a chair / Perhaps it ought to come with warnings / Like the chair instructions.” How could any writer with even a passing acquaintance with the glorious canon of English-language poetry kick off a collection with a poem this mundane unless writing for children? Meanwhile, “the retired dentist from Edgbaston” in My Last Landlady reads like a jejune parody of Eliot’s “small house-agent’s clerk” from The Wasteland in fact, it is supposed to be a “scary” poem but the only thing scary about the poetry in this collection is its inclusion. So here was another chance – many chances – to discover where the reputation comes from. But what about new readers? Almost alone in the universe, I found his last novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, unconvincing. T his is a new collection of 23 short stories and poems that will delight Gaiman’s army of fans.
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