Oh, he's not always been Neil Gaiman of course, that's just who he looks like this time, but he (or she) will always show up when there seems to be a need for the world's imagination to be pushed into believing in the things that go bump in the night or the light that can dazzle so bright. How do you think that Barrie fellow was able to write Peter Pan? Didn't all that stuff about believing give you a clue?
Anyway, enough of that, let's just be looking at what we're looking at, which is Mr. Gaiman's book, Stardust. According to an interview that's included in the book, or it might have been the author's note, he claims that this book is a prequel to a story that may well never be written. (If that isn't an example of something being a little off the boil I don't know what is.)
Now that's almost as confusing as that Star Wars thing, what with last being released 20 years before first – but that, I think, was a case of not knowing your arse from a tea kettle more than anything else, if you was asking me which you aren't, so we won't waste no more breath on the matter. Save for to say that's the only time you'll see me comparing Neil Gaiman with something like that; it's like comparing cabbages and kings if you ask me. (Of course since they both give me gas on occasion – cabbages and kings – not Neil Gaiman and Mr. Lucas, although the latter can be a right pain in the place where gas emits – there may be some merits for comparison but it's too deep a matter for this shallow shovel to dig into.)
So, for sure Mr. Gaiman knows a thing or two that he's not letting on, but one only has to look at the evidence against him to know that he knows things that others don’t. Perhaps, as that nice French pilot put it, (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince) they may not appear to be "matters of consequence" to most of the world, but to those of us who have learned that "it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye," they are matters of great importance.
Article comments
1 - Snarkattack
Fab review! Doesn't it make you feel all wide-eyed and expectant as one once did in childhood upon hearing of such places and people?
My copy is the graphic novel version illustrated by Charles Vess and the art is just sumptuous.
I hear they are planning to make a film adaptation of this, I pray it's not true. Something's bound to get...mucked up.
2 - Katie McNeill
I was looking at this online somewhere the other day and now I'll just have to pick it up
3 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net, which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States. Nice work!
4 - Defying Gravity since 1993
After reading the novel a million and one times i decided that Stardust is possibly the best book ever written. The film version isn't that bad either but i would have liked to have seen the film to follow the book a little better - especially the end of it. The film is too nice and childlike yet the novel is a bit more grown up (for example, Tristan dies at the end of the novel but in the film he and Yvaine live happily ever after in the sky) I think the way Neil Gaiman drew on fairytales and intergrated them into the novel was superb and the use of imagery and gentle reminders that the novel isn't as nice as it seems (like the unicorn dieing) is brilliant! Excellent read! I would recomend it to anyone!