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This is a collection of short stories, with a few poems and a novella thrown in, written by Neil Gaiman in recent years. I think the style is a bit different from his previous collection, Smoke and Mirrors, because there is more humour. Still, it's the usual Gaiman style: old myths and classic terror through a very modern filter.

The only thing that I don't like is that the novella takes place after the events in the novel "American Gods", spoiling it if you read it before.

This book is unavoidably rambling, as the authors of each chapter make things harder and harder for whoever comes next. Don't expect a cute, nostalgic or commedy-of-manners Irish caricature, although the kind of humour is definitely recognisable. It is also a lot more violent than I expected, so it reads sometimes like a novelised Quentin Tarantino movie, making fun of its own gore and not even trying to make any sense.

The world did not need a cheap imitation of the interior monologue novels of the 1920's, which has, oh! ah! the great originality of having three protagonists, and ooohhh! aaaaahhh! many gay and lesbian characters. This is a watered down, easy version of Virginia Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway".

But watch the movie, for once it is better than the book.

I'm not completely sure if I've liked this book or not. The story is fascinating, but I would have liked a bit more character development.

The ideas are good, but the book is badly written. the jokes are not funny, the themes are too dependent on the year this was written in (shortly before Bush's reelection) and the writing jumps here and there without making any solid conclusions. Stupid White Men was a lot better and funnier, and in any case, I'd rather stick to Moore's movies.

I read this book in a mad hurry to reach the end of each story, so I don't have a well-formed impression other than they fact that it's very sketchy and episodic, especially the first two books. The setting is at times even sordid (what would you expect of the Bronx during the Depression) but the most interestin thing about the themes is that there is a basic tenderness and compassion in the treatment of the characters that seems odd considering their flaws and miseries.

It does have a feature that I love in a comic: it could not be told in any other form. The pace is too hectic for a "normal" book and too clever for a movie.