Fragile Things

In “Fragile Things”, Neil Gaiman works at short length, and stories like “A Study in Emerald” and “October in the Chair” show how it suits him. Poems sit among the prose, and the mood runs dark and mysterious. Some readers find the book uneven, with pieces that fall flat beside the best; as with any collection, which ones will differ from reader to reader.

Worth knowing Fragile Things, from 2006, collects thirty-one short stories and poems Neil Gaiman wrote over the previous decade, and the ones people buy it for are A Study in Emerald, Sherlock Holmes in a London ruled by Lovecraft’s Old Ones, which won the Hugo for short story in 2004, The Monarch of the Glen, a novella that follows Shadow from American Gods to a party in the Scottish Highlands, and How to Talk to Girls at Parties, which became a film. Others are slighter, written for anthologies, tribute volumes and a Tori Amos tour book, and Gaiman’s introduction tells the story behind each. The collection won the Locus Award. Read it for the four or five that matter; the rest are the workshop.

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