Her Book Review: Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman (1998)

Why she read it: familiar with Neil Gaiman; found copy at used book store

Would she recommend it: yes

Her review: My experience with Neil Gaiman before this book is the Sandman graphic novels which I really enjoyed as well as the Coraline movie. So, I picked this book up on a lark and thoroughly enjoyed it. It is a series of short stories and poems and in his intro, Gaiman gives us some background to the stories, which I found myself flipping back to as I got to the stories. A particular favorite was “Bay Wolf,” a Beowulf/Baywatch mash-up involving a werewolf to boot. Gaiman adopts a variety of voices, a variety of styles, some of which are more succesful than others (he notes that writing like Raymond Carver is hard and that shows here). But these stories and poems are engaging and just short enough to be a good read anywhere and any time.