Wednesday, December 28, 2011

The Doll's House

    This is the third and final selection from "jumpstart on January," as I will be saving two selections for the assigned month (beginning in less than a week). All clear? Great. In the meantime, I just finished The Doll's House, the second of ten in the collected Sandman graphic novels by Neil Gaiman. When the first in the set was assigned, a couple of month's back, I mentioned that I liked the potential of the story and characters more than the story and characters themselves. This is often true when it comes to the beginning of a series of books or television shows. I wondered, at the time, whether I'd enjoy reading on in the Sandman series.
    I did. This second book begins with a fully developed title character, which provides the story with a strong foundation to build upon. The story that is built, of a woman named Rose Walker who may be a vortex, is often dark, sometimes demented, and always dreamlike. Gaiman's interplay between reality and dreams and his questioning of whether reality is any more "real," is deftly done. Having long despised the "it was all a dream" device as a copout, I was pleased to see Gaiman imbue it with real meaning. This book made me both afraid and excited to go to sleep. It made me wonder what I might dream and ready to get started.

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