Book review: Neil Gaiman flits mischievously through Trigger Warning

by Neil Gaiman

Headline

Talking to Kazuo Ishiguro earlier this year about the complicated relationship between genre fiction and the literary mainstream, Neil Gaiman spoke of literary genres as "places that you don't necessarily want to go unless you're a native". Trigger Warning, Gaiman's third collection of short fiction, continues the theme by asking whether any fictions should in fact be "safe places", or whether their purpose should instead be to "hurt in ways that make [one] think and grow and change".

A section headed General Apology regrets its "hodge-podge and willy-nilly" nature - a motley crew of fairy tales, folk tales, spine-tinglers, free verse and fan fiction. One suspects, though, that Gaiman is not wholly contrite, and that the composition of the collection may itself be a gentle challenge to literary orthodoxy.