Coraline and her mother and father move into an old house that’s been
subdivided into flats. It’s an intriguing place, with an overgrown old
garden in back, two ladies who were once in the theater living downstairs, and
an old man who claims to be training mice to perform on stage living
upstairs. There’s a lot to explore, which suits Coraline down to the
ground. The most interesting thing is a door in the corner of the
drawingroom, a door that used to lead to the other half of the floor but
now goes nowhere because it’s been bricked up on the other side.

And then one day it rains, and Coraline has to explore indoors. And
though the old black door is locked, Coraline knows where the key is
kept….

Coraline is supposedly a children’s book, written for (I’d
guess) intermediate readers; it’s also a truly creepy little horror
story. As always, Gaiman does a wonderful job of creating a tiny little
world with its own surreal laws–what I think of as a pocket universe.
The only author I can think of who has done it better is
Sheri Tepper, and even she’s done so only in her “Marianne”
series, which is blessedly free of the heavy-handed Significance of her
later books.

Being a Gaiman fan I bought it for myself, and while I might read
it to Dave, I think I’ll wait for a couple of years–too scary.