Stories : all-new tales edited by Neil Gaiman & Al Sarrantonio
Read for the Once Upon a Time V reading challenge, see what every one’s been reading on the review site
Martin Kobel specialises in helping people. That’s his job, as a therapist, people in need come to him and he helps them. And when he bumps into Annabelle Young at a cafe he sees in her someone he can help. But she hasn’t asked him for help, he passes her his card, hoping that will prompt her to ask for assistance. That doesn’t work. And she is a teacher, her trouble could easily damage a whole class of young impressionable children. He has to do something.
Stories edited by Neil Gaiman & Al Sarrantonio
This is the first thing I’ve ever read by Deaver, which I think is quite an achievement, considering we must have a bajillion of his books at work :)
And this story would encourage me to try more by him as it was quite entertaining. I really enjoyed the ambiguity and the “is he crazy” question the reader has to ask themselves. I also liked the idea of the nemes, demons by another name in a way. However, the shift in narrator from the first person therapist to the 3rd person court scenes didn’t quite work for me. It felt as though this scene had to happen, but that Deaver couldn’t quite make it work from Kobel’s point of view, and so had to use the omniscient narrator instead.
And the ending was a bit cliched in tone. Still, an interesting story that did make me want to find out what happened next, which is, the whole point of this collection of stories.
If you’ve reviewed this let me know and I’ll link to it.
I have never read anything by Deaver either. He just doesn't seem like someone I want to read and I'm not sure this story – that does sound good indeed – is represenetative but maybe I'm just prejudiced. Some writers have that effect.
Caroline´s last blog post ..Dutch Reading Month in June
I don't think this story is enough to inspire me go looking for something by him, but if I stumble over it I may skim a couple of pages and see what's what.
Sometimes I cannot believe I haven't read this yet. Bad me. Especially with a new Gaiman story in it. Then again, I'm sort of wanting to not read all Gaiman's short stories because then when a new collection of them comes out I'll have a whole gaggle of fresh (to me) stories to read.
The Gaiman story is good, actually it is better than I thought, because it has stayed with me. After I finished it I was a bit "hmm, okay", but now I'm more, hmmm, that was quite good actually :)