Mrs. Whitaker is a nice old lady with nice friends, who lives in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. She was also living a nice, peaceful life until one day her routine was interrupted by Sir Galahad, a handsome knight on a quest to find the Holy Grail. So begins this Neil Gaiman fantasy. Having recently bought the Grail at an op-shop, Mrs. Whitaker refuses Galahad’s offers of the Sword of Invincibility and Apple of (eternal) Life in exchange. Fortunately, the lad finds two other items that she thinks would look better on the mantelpiece! More…
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Snow, Glass, Apples
This Neil Gaiman story is yet another re-invention of the Snow White tale. What is special about it is the shift in point-of-view from a third-person omniscient narrator to the first-person perspective of the Queen. This allows the whole story to be re-imagined in a way we are unlikely to see in the next Disney version. The much-maligned Queen knows a little magic (enough to glimpse the future and enchant the King), but not enough to match her evil, vampiric, sexually depraved stepdaughter. In the end, the poor Queen adds a new meaning to the slang term to feel cooked. More…
Click-Clack the Rattlebag
Neil Gaiman’s Click-Clack the Rattlebag is a short campfire-style horror story that sucks you in (no disrespect to Click-Clacks intended) and then at the very end surprises. A young man is spending time with his girlfriend’s much younger brother. The boy asks for a bed-time story that is “a little bit” scary. In describing what he means by this the boy tells the man about Click-Clacks, “the best monsters ever”, that come from the dark when you don’t pay attention. We are left to ponder how the narrator is still around to tell the tale. Themes: fear, awareness. More…
Other People
This Neil Gaiman story provides an interesting perspective on punishment in the afterlife. However, it is not for the fainthearted. Upon entering a room in hell, a man meets the “demon” that will become his tormentor. After suffering excruciating pain from each of the 211 torture instruments lining the walls, he asks the demon what comes next. The answer: the true pain begins! And so it does for what seems like several thousand more years. In the last sentence, we learn why Gaiman agreed to change the title of the story from his original choice (Afterlife) to Other People. More…
Babycakes
Although written for a worthy cause, many readers find this short satirical vignette by Neil Gaiman very disturbing. It was featured in the 1991 anthology comic Born to be Wild, sales of which benefited PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). The story provides a modern take on Jonathan Swift’s infamous 1729 satirical essay A Modest Proposal, which advocated solving an Irish famine by having the very poor sell their babies to the rich: “A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled…” OMG! More…