May 12 - "How to Talk to Girls at Parties"

“How to Talk to Girls at Parties”
by Neil Gaiman
M Is for Magic (2007)

* * * (Good) Science Fiction

A couple of teenage boys in search of a party find a house filled with girls not quite like they expected to find.

Much like the poem the narrator cannot remember, this story is a mystery to me. The prose is pleasant and the story moves from beginning through to end, but I cannot explain what it all means. What I can do is relate to the narrator’s dilemma – talking to girls at parties. Gaiman does great job describing that unease – the hesitation to speak to strangers of the opposite sex. In fact, the foreignness of the girls’ discussions could almost work in a more realistic story in which two strangers meet, talk, and learn they couldn’t be two more different people.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned the spot illustrations by Teddy Kristiansen that accompany each story in this collection. They are amazing. I’ve been a fan of Kristiansen since his work on Vertigo’s House of Secrets. They are just “weird” enough to fit the stories in this collection perfectly.