Coraline by Neil Gaiman: An Exercise in Radical Acceptance, Maybe

Out my window, rain pours down in buckets. A bass boat roars past, leaving Flat Swamp ostensibly with the destination of a launch at Pebble Beach or Southmont Abbotts Creek—to escape this unexpected downturn in weather and relinquish the goal of sport fishing for the day. Temps dropped from 90 degrees two days ago to 57 degrees this morning (Fahrenheit of course).

In my world, this is the season for Coraline.

I’m not quite, quite sure why, but Coraline—the film, mind you—has been the first movie I reach for at the first sign of autumn every year over the past decade. Maybe it has something to do with having children so young and delighting in “childish” things well into motherhood. Maybe it’s my taste for gothic horror which I developed in early childhood. It’s strange though, as the movie itself doesn’t seem to take place during autumn and has just one instance of two glowing jack-o-lanterns in the backyard garden. It must be the movie’s weather.

Both of my children have flown the nest now, but Coraline is still my first thought the first day of autumn. Watching Coraline for the 1363th time two nights ago, it dawned on me: I should probably read the book. Is it any good? How many liberties did the screenwriters take? Generally speaking, books are always better (deeper, more complex) than their film counterparts—would that be true for this one, too? It’s a children’s book; it’d be quick anyway, right? Why not?

So here we go: a review of Neail Gaiman’s terrifyingly sweet little gothic book, Coraline.

Coraline is a children’s book first published in 2002. Gaiman explains in his 2012 foreword to the novel that he began writing it for his five-year-old daughter, Holly, who “liked scary stories, with witches and brave little girls in them” (xiv). It is the story of an 11-year-old girl, small for her age, who moves with her parents into a flat in a large, divided old home (in England, in the book—not Oregon as in the movie). In that home, Coraline discovers many secrets kept behind a locked door. As the plot unfolds, Coraline befriends a cat; saves the secret hearts of three dead children; recovers her lost parents; and outsmarts the powerful, spider-like other mother.

In this review, it feels important to address the more recent public scandal surrounding Neil Gaiman himself, the novel’s overarching message/theme, its quality of writing at the sentence level, and the success of its adaptation to stop-motion film in 2009.

First, let’s talk about Gaiman. Gaiman is a prolific writer of short fiction, novels, and comics, among other things. Aside from Coraline, I had been familiar with Gaiman because we read his short story, “Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire” for my very first Intro to Fiction class in 2022 (taught by my favorite English instructor of all time, Maria DeBlassie). You can read my brief analysis of that short story on my blog, megvlaun.com, right here. But before even that, I paid to access Gaiman’s Masterclass on writing online, not really knowing who he was. His Masterclass was fantastic, actually, but it seems to have since been removed perhaps because of the scandal.

Two years ago, in 2024, a group of women stepped forward to accuse Gaiman of sexual assault. There are many details to this story which I will not include here; you can find them on Gaiman’s Wikipedia page, if you care. I will say, only, that I have been sort of half-aware of this scandal about the periphery of my interest and until two days ago, never really investigated it. Apparently, as of February this year, all allegations have been dismissed in US courts, for whatever that’s worth.

But the scandal brings to my mind the book, Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer, which I have also reviewed on my blog, here, if you care to read. Dederer’s book explores this idea of monsters who create art—and whether we should be permitted to appreciate the art, despite its having been created by monsters. My favorite example of Dederer’s is Pablo Picasso because, despite his cruelty toward others and ill-treatment of women, I have witnessed his piece, Guernica, firsthand in the Reina Sofia in Madrid, and there is simply no way this depiction of war could not move a person to certain emotions. Pieces like Guernica have the power to reshape value systems, despite Picasso’s objectionable character.

My perspective on the valuation of art despite its artist is probably not common. In fact, sometimes, I notice the opposite situation as well: many artists create horrifying, objectionable art, whereby the artist themselves are normal, unobjectionable people. Take, for example, Stephen King or Vladimir Nabokov. The truth is, I believe we do all contain multitudes. Here, a quick Walt Whitman poem for you:

“Song of Myself, 51”

The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them.

And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?

Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,

(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.

Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper?

Who wishes to walk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

And, as I’ve learned from Carl Jung, we each contain shadow selves. I am not immune to the shadow self; neither are you. This understanding shapes my worldview, as some of the most important people in my own life have behaved toward me in the most despicable ways, and of that I can be awake and aware, yet I need not condemn. It is possible to accept the truth and see it as representative of humanity, not monstrousness. Note: please do not misrepresent what I say here as forgiveness. It is merely awareness—removing the blindfold—and radical acceptance.

Our shadows make us uniquely human.

Anyway, Gaiman may or may not be guilty of these accusations. But even if he were, his behavior would not alter my enjoyment of “Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire” or of Coraline. I can distinguish the art from the artist. So be it. Onward.

Part of the reason it feels important to value Coraline on its own merit, aside from its author’s life choices, lies in its message: girls can do difficult things, and “being brave didn’t mean you weren’t scared” (xvii). Again, we know that Gaiman began writing this story for his eldest daughter, Holly; he finished writing it for his youngest daughter, Maddy. These intentions, as described in Gaiman’s foreword, I find beautiful. This lesson Coraline learns from her father, who, after protecting Coraline from a swarm of wasps, is stung some 90+ times himself, but then must return to the site of the wasp massacre to retrieve his lost glasses. Coraline explains this to the black cat: “…when you’re scared but you still do it anyway, that’s brave” (57). And of course, Coraline embodies this message throughout the story but especially at the book’s dénouement, when she must bait the other mother’s violent, detached hand to dispose of it, once and for all. In the end, Coraline arrives back in her real world with a new set of eyes:

            She sat down on one of her grandmother’s uncomfortable armchairs, and the cat sprang up into her lap and made itself comfortable. The light that came through the picture window was daylight, real golden late-afternoon daylight, not a white mist light. The sky was a robin’s-egg blue, and Coraline could see trees and, beyond the trees, green hills, which faded on the horizon into purples and grays. The sky had never seemed so sky, the world had never seemed so world.

            Coraline stared at the leaves on the trees and at the patterns of light and shadow on the cracked bark of the trunk of the beech tree outside the window. Then she looked down at her own lap, at the way that the rich sunlight brushed every hair on the cat’s head, turning each white whisker into gold.

            Nothing, she thought, had ever been so interesting. (135)

Here, Gaiman illustrates to his young readers the benefits of surviving a challenge: new appreciation and a new perspective—new eyes. A powerful message to share with daughters.

Gaiman’s writing in this novel is exceptionally tight. His sentences are simple—nothing Proustian—and his word choices are vivid and clear. It struck me, actually, how precisely and concisely Gaiman lays the groundwork for the story (the house, the neighbors, the door) all in the first two double-spaced pages of text. It struck me, perhaps, because of the elaborate detail in the stop-motion film. It turns out that much of this detail was imagined by the screenwriters, and perhaps there is a bit of a lesson in this: by giving the reader slightly less, Gaiman offers gaps where imagination might play, extrapolate, discover, create. Of course, in this particular copy of the book, Dave McKean’s illustrations also carry much of that load. But as I just participated in a fiction workshop focused on beginnings, what I’d like to share here is Gaiman’s first sentence:

            Coraline discovered the door a little while after they moved into the house (1).

God, I love this first sentence. Already, we learn this house is new to Coraline. Already we learn the house has secrets. Already, we are intrigued by the mystery. Simple, yet gripping. But the next sentence is almost just as great:

     It was a very old house—it had an attic under the roof and a cellar under the ground and an overgrown garden with huge old trees in it (1).

These two opening sentences make me smile, even now. Already, this story is gothic to its core. This right here is my jam. The writing continues this way throughout; if repetitions exist, they exist on purpose—there are no redundancies. Descriptions are vivid and concise and only the most important descriptions are included. There is something to be learned from Gaiman’s sentence-level writing about what works for children. Noted.

Ultimately, the stop-motion adaptation of Coraline may be one of the best film adaptations I’ve encountered. Of course, there are major alterations to the plot and characters, but these feel necessary. For example, the movie’s Wybie—Wyborn Lovat—does not exist in the book, but he serves the purpose of representing Coraline’s interiority: in film, we cannot read the protagonist’s thoughts, so those must be expressed via dialogue. Wybie permits Coraline to talk about her thoughts, giving the audience her perspective. Then, there are scenes, like I said, the screenwriters imagined or extrapolated from Gaiman’s succinct descriptions—like the Rat Man’s popcorn-pooping hen and cotton-candy cannons, which never appear in the novel.

On the other hand, some scenes and dialogue are taken from the novel with absolute precision, such as the velvety black pants and glittering star sweater Coraline dons in the other world. Or her mother’s words as she throws Coraline into the mirror-closet:

“You may come out when you’ve learned some manners,” said the other mother. “And when you’re ready to be a loving daughter.” (77)

This is one of the closest adaptations to an original text I’ve seen. Plus, the film is gorgeous. Every color choice screams Halloween, even though the original text was set in rural England during a rainy, cold summer. Vivid purples, oranges, reds, and greens place the viewer in a hyperreality that makes sense, given the other mother’s created world. The whole thing works, and this shouldn’t surprise anyone, really, as Gaiman played a role in the film’s development.

How should I sum this up? My recommendation to you is to perhaps not look up the controversy surrounding Gaiman if you think it might alter your appreciation of Coraline, either in its original text or stop-motion film adaptation. It’s that season, again. Step through the door.