Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

I don't know when I first became aware of Neil Gaiman and his work. I want to hazard a guess and say it was around the time the film Stardust was released. I loved the film so much I talked to my friend about it. I don't know if I was aware that it was a book then but I know shortly after that I read the book and it is currently sitting on my shelf.
Fast forward to 2009. A trip to England has just been made and I am doing my first bit of big traveling in the states to Minneapolis for my English Honors convention. After blogging for my study abroad trip, I find myself volunteering to blog for convention. I didn't do it well or very often, but I did blog about one guest. That guest, you've guessed it: Neil Gaiman.

I think I was surprised by his celebrity. There were guards at the doors of the hotel, keeping the great unwashed non-convention members at bay so that college and grad students from around the world could sit and listen to him read in that gorgeous British accent of his. I don't even remember what he read, but I fell in love. He also talked about what it is like to be a writer and where he got his ideas. I believe he said that his favorite literary period was "Normally after lunch" and all those ideas? From his daughter's imagination. Which I love. He also said that the most important question a writer could ask is, "What if?" 

What if...you found yourself around a campfire telling stories with the months of the year personified? What would that look like? 
What if...we knew Susan's side of the story? Would our opinion of her change?
What if...hell was worse than anything we could possibly imagine...and then some? 

Fragile Things covers all of these "what if" questions, and how. Some of his stories are incredibly moving, some are thought provoking. Some, I will admit, were scary. All were well crafted and beautiful and I absolutely recommend this book to everyone. You might not like all the stories in the book. I'm not sure I liked all of them. But I did read all of them and can appreciate the immense talent that Neil Gaiman has. 
(As a side note, you should also check out his book Neverwhere. It sits next to my copy of Stardust and I love it dearly. If you read Coraline, do so with the light on. Trust me. That is one creepy kid's book...)

If I loved you, I would tell you this

I just finished (and by "just finished" I mean I finished this book maybe 10 minutes ago.) If I loved you, I would tell you this by Robin Black over dinner tonight. I don't think it quite took me a week. I have three other reviews on tap for this month already but figured, since I finished it and had time to write, I should get a review up pronto. 
I have been speaking to many people about this book over the last few days. I don't always do that, talk to people about what I'm reading, unless people ask me. There are few books that demand my attention and require me to spread their story to others around me. It's like when I started Hunger Games or Why We Broke Up. Those stories gave me no choice but to go to all of my friends and say, unasked and possibly unwanted, "Have you heard of this book? You NEED to read it." When I told my co-worker that I had finally finished the book, she asked what I thought. I replied simply and truthfully: My emotions hurt. 

If I loved you, I would tell you this is a collection of ten short stories that Robin Black says took her nearly 8 years to write. Before they were a book, she tells us in the Acknowledgements, they existed individually in various literary journals. On their own, they are beautiful; in a bound collection, they are haunting. That doesn't even  come close to describing the book, really. 
Perhaps this is a better way to describe the book: 

What makes this such an exquisite collection is the way Robin Black brings unpredictable elements into the emotional lives of her characters, creating that special kind of literary magic where a reader experiences everything right alongside them and it all feels new. -- Hanna Tinti

 I'm sitting here, typing and re-typing, erasing and re-writing the same sentence in an attempt to properly describe this book. It's the story of love and loss, of joy and deep hurt. It hits and resurfaces emotions you didn't remember you had or tried so hard to forget. It is story of a father and his blind daughter trying to overcome the boundaries caused by her blindness, only to find that they seem to communicate more with what is left unsaid rather than unseen. It is the unsent letter of a woman with cancer to her uncaring neighbor who is disputing property boundary lines at the worst of times. She is shocked not by his actions, but with the total and complete disregard of common sense manners. Had he been kinder, maybe she would have explained their situation; as it was, she kept the situation to herself and tried to politely argue the age old lines that had been honored for years before the young man moved in next door.  

I will tell you this: it put me in a funk. I have been in a weird place, emotionally, for the week and I think I will need to blame the book. Not a "shame one you!" kind of blame. Just a "huh, well at least there is an explanation" kind of blame. 
Don't let me talk you out of reading this book, though. I promise, it's worth it.