Coraline

Coraline (2002) is a short novel for children (and adults, too) by the British author Neil Gaiman. Often compared to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland books, it is the story of a young girl, daughter of loving but terminally distracted parents, who finds a door in the family apartment which previously opened onto a concrete wall but now opens onto a corridor, down which she finds another apartment, seemingly an exact copy of her own, inhabited by her Other Mother. A subtle and economical novel, it concerns identity, familial love and self-belief, hinting at multiple interpretations but refusing to be pinned to one or another. Its American hardback edition features black-and-white illustrations by frequent Gaiman collaborator Dave McKean.