Book review: 'Coraline' by Neil Gaiman

Review of the novel ‘Coraline’ written by Anton Constantinou

Imagine a world where everything you have come to exist with takes on a further existence of its own. Whereupon the Mother who indulged your sweet tooth as a child, offers you a beetle as if it were a stick of liquorice. For Coraline, a young girl with an appetite for exploration yet an initial deficiency in the childhood belief in the paranormal, a cupboard door leads, not to nothingness [as her parents have told tell her] but instead; to the realisation that life as she knows it has a duplicate, albeit with a few minor alterations.
Neil Gaiman's enchanting wit and undeniable strangeness aided by equally haunting illustrations, is a bone numbing portrayal of how fairytales can take a turn worst and at the centre of it all there lies ”counterfeit parents”.This is Gaiman's first children’s book, but even I found it hard to stomach. In essence, it is Alice and Wonderland with a generous dose of Tabasco which should unnerve of even the most resilient of readers. It took me back to a time where everywhere nightmare I had, however diverse, seemed possible,and to this day, I will never quite look at buttons in the same way again…