Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions

Neil Gaiman's first collection of short fiction spans the 80's and 90's and showcases a vivid imagination and some wonderful writing.

The stories here range from amusing to scary, from disturbing to perverse and are never less than interesting. Gaiman's introduction gives a brief description of the genesis of each story and he even includes an entire short story about a marriage. A kind of Dorian Gray for the suburban set.

Personal favourites include Chivalry, where an old lady finds the Holy Grail in a charity shop and is then visited by Sir Galahad himself; the Goldfish Pool and Other Stories, which is semi-autobiographical and tells of a writer coming to LA to work on a script and the old hotel he stays in; One Life Furnished in early Moorcock, about a boy's obsession with said writer (again semi-autobiographical); and Murder Mysteries, a story set amongst Angels during the time before the act of Creation itself.

Two stories haunt me though, the brief Babycakes and the dark Snow, Glass, Apples. One was written for PETA to highlight cruelty to animals and is quite disturbing; the other is a retelling of Snow White from the Queen's point of view. You'll never read that fairy tale in the same way again.

So, if you like Mr Gaiman you will love these stories. If you haven't read much of his work, this and his other collection, Fragile Things, are good places to start.

Happy reading!

I'm frustrated! Frustrated, I say! It took me exactly one entire month to finish this book, and I didn't like it as much as I expected to. In fact, I would be giving it 2 stars if it weren't for the last two stories. Two stars. Neil Gaiman. Two. Stars. See? Frustrated.

I've had lots of people telling me how hit-or-miss Gaiman can be, how his stories' formula starts to get old after a while, but I didn't quite believe that. I mean I hadn't seen this in Neil Gaiman at all—until now. See, it's not that S&M's stories are bad, they're just... weak. Meh. So so. Wishy-washy. Come on, it's Neil fucking Gaiman we're talking about, I sure as Hell expected more than wishy-washy. Also, I'm not sure that I got them? Maybe I'm being paranoid, but the point went way over my head in some.

The two very last stories saved it for me: Murder Mysteries, and Snow, Glass, Apples. Snow, Glass, Apples was, in fact, the reason I picked S&M up, to begin with—and I was terrified it would suck. It didn't. I'm happy.