Fragile Things

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman. William Morrow.

About ten years ago I went to the worst concert I’ve ever seen. The opening band was Self, a one hit wonder, and one whose one hit (”So Low”) wasn’t very good. The headlining band was Cracker. They opened with a song I liked, “I Hate my Generation”. Then they played country rockabilly music? crap for about nineteen hours. Then they closed with “Low”.

(I think they came out for an encore, but I’d had enough. It was the first and last concert I’ve left before it was really over.)

Fragile Things is just like Cracker’s concert, but without an opening band. And it’s made up of short stories and poems, not songs. And it is pretty good, certainly not the worst book I’ve ever read.

So it really wasn’t much like that Cracker concert at all… except that the first story and the last story are by far the best in the book. The first is based on “A Study in Scarlet”, with a Lovecraftian twist. The last is a short sequel to American Gods.

And, really, the stuff in the middle is pretty respectable too. Recommended.