Another day, another Neil Gaiman audio book un-review. I do listen to audio books by other authors, as will be proven in the next post, but for now, "Coraline".
Unlike "The Ocean at the End of the Lane", I couldn't find this book read by Neil himself but, I saw Dawn French's name and thought that was pretty safe hands nonetheless. Dawn French's reading is warm, comforting and expressive, as we (Brits) would expect, and this is both a positive and a negative. On the one hand, the warm familiar voice adds an extra layer of discomfort to the most sinister passages of the text, however it also adds a slightly 'Jackanory' quality to other parts, which is difficult to shake off. The curse of a celebrity voice isn't anything new - will they ever learn? *shakes a first in the general direction of DreamWorks*.
The choice of Dawn French makes sense as I suppose I do have to concede that this is a children's book, albeit a hugely disturbing one. I have also read the 'real' book and it really doesn't read like a children's book at all, more like an odd little short story, so this is probably why the choice of narrator was, for me, a little jarring.