La maschera ed il doppio (quello riflesso): nascondersi dietro una maschera oppure guardarsi allo specchio per superarsi.

Alcuni brani:

Se hai bisogno di un posto speciale, un tetto va benissimo. Da un tetto ogni cosa sembra molto piccola e molto lontana, e sei solo tu e il mare e il cielo.(pagina ...)

Il bibliotecario ha replicato: "Faresti meglio a portare il libro con te. Se lo lasci comincerà a lamentarsi e a far deprimere tutti gli altri e in men che non si dica inizieranno a sfaldarsi. Pagine ovunque." (pagina ...)

E appoggio sempre i miei libri con attenzione, nel caso dovessero volare via
o spiccare un salto in aria per tornare da soli al loro scaffale. (pagina ...)

( )

MirrorMask was my first work introduction to Neil Gaiman and has a very special place in my heart. It's one of my favorite movies and this book has plenty of original art by Dave McKean and screenshots from the movie as well. I was utterly captivated by this book and movie when I first encountered it in High school. The aesthetic and look is very dynamic and unique- there isn't really much else like it as it stands well on its own. The art, typography, and layout of the book all feel like some sort of art project and reminiscent of an artist cruising through their own sketchbook or journal. The story is compelling and at times nonsensical, but all the dark charm is there. Fans of surreal art and imaginative dream-like material will totally dig this book and movie.

Definitely give the movie a go after or before reading this book. Either way works! ( )

Helena comes from a circus family and when her mother (not long after they’ve fought) ends up in the hospital, Helena has odd dreams.

This was just odd, I thought. Apparently a movie came first? This has illustrations throughout and it’s short. Since the bulk of the book was a dream, like many dreams it just went from odd happening to odd happening. ( )

3.5 stars. STRANGE! I'm a huge Neil Gaiman fan but this book is very odd and disjointed. It's intended to have a dreamlike quality and certainly does, but I'm not quite sure what I think of it. ( )

A wonderfully imaginative novel by Neil Gaiman, whom I love. And the young female narrator, named Stephanie something, was simply smashing at her job narrating this novel. If you have any youngsters or Tweens that like this kind of novel, you should have them give it a listen/look. They will be as enchanted as I am by it. It's probably available at your local library's wilbor/bridges page. 4 stars! ( )

This reminded me a bit of Coraline, it was a little dark & creepy. Quick read and good overall. ( )

it's... fine. Nothing special, but perfectly acceptable in all ways. More a fantasy of a middle aged man who wants to think that the girl who's fighting with him isn't his real daughter than the fantasy of a pre-teen girl who wants to run away. ( )

This is basically one long dream sequence. It had some nice imagery and cool characters, but ultimately it felt a lot like other dream-as-metaphor stories I've read: everything the girl does in the dream, no matter how bizarre, has some kind of impact on the real world. In short: decent but not my favorite Gaiman tale. ( )

I was confused by all the dream symbolism. ( )

MirrorMask is an Alice-in-Wonderland-style tale about a girl who works in her family circus and wishes to escape to real life. Instead, she dreams that she becomes part of the elaborate, nonsensical world she has drawn on her walls. There, she finds that her life has been taken over by another, and her only way of escape is bared by beautiful and grotesque figures like floating giants, rainbow-winged sphinxes with human faces, and a selfish juggler named Valentine.

In part, it’s a coming-of-age story, but sparkling or shadowed by the fantastical, twisted, and lovely incomprehensibility of a dark dream. It is also charming to adults and children alike because it is a picture book, in which the lines of words themselves grow or shrink, twist and entwine with the illustrations, or change colors from light to dark. Simple, unexpected – everything one who loves Neil Gaiman has come to appreciate about his work. ( )

Utterly fantastic just as the movie :) ( )

Finished reading my signed (!) copy of "MirrorMask" the movie tie-in. The story itself wasn't too terribly gripping compared to Gaiman's other works but I'm happy to have a chance to read it from Helena's point of view.

Imagine that you grew up in a family of circus performers, drifting from place to place, would you be contented with that life or would you crave normalcy at the other side of the fence?

Knowing that this is another great collaboration between Gaiman & McKean, expect spectacular visual presentation as well as movie stills.

Fave lines from the book:

"Let them. I want to run away and join Real Life."

"It's letting the apology change things. But an apology is where it has to begin."

This is supposedly the children's edition (I also have the film script version) but I personally think that this is better suited to the young adult level.

Book Details:

Title MirrorMask (Children's Edition)
Author Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean
Reviewed By Purplycookie ( )

review at www.unboundblogzine.com ( )

Summary: Helena Campbell is the daughter of two circus performers. When her mother gets very ill after an argument, Helena finds herself in a dream world that is split into light and dark. The White Queen, who looks like Helena’s mother, is in an enchanted sleep, and Helena must find the MirrorMask, a charm that will wake the queen and allow Helena to travel back to her own world. However, the Dark Queen has plans for Helena as well, and even more disturbing is the girl who has taken Helena’s place in her own world, bent on destruction.

Review: MirrorMask was originally written as a screenplay, then made into a movie, then novelized from the movie into this book. I haven’t seen the film yet, so I can’t compare, but as a book, it’s pretty “meh”. In pretty typical Neil Gaiman style (particularly Neil-Gaiman-for-children style), a bunch of creepy/spooky stuff happens, and very little is explained satisfactorily, and the whole point or message seems to be “Spooky, huh?” Perhaps things make more sense in movie format, but if so, it didn’t translate very well onto the page. The short run time is a mixed blessing; longer and perhaps Gaiman would have had more time to flesh out the characters and the action and maybe even explain a thing or two, but as it is, I was glad it was so short, so that I didn’t have to spend much of my time trying to figure out what the heck was going on. 2 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Fans of Coraline are going to be the most likely to enjoy this, but it’s not something that I particularly would recommend. ( )

Disturbing and not high on my list of recommendations. A girl gets tossed out of her own world into the Mirror world where things are pretty ugly. The one positive is that it is a short audiobook which can be listened to in less than 2 hours. ( )

Helena Campbell's family owns and operates a small circus and she does whatever is needed to help - juggle, clown, take and sell tickets. But she wants to escape into "real life".

Then her mother becomes seriously ill, and in a dream, Helena sees another girl just like her. This other girl is a runaway from a mirror world and has switched places with Helena, leaving Helena in a dream world. ( )

http://books.moonsoar.com/archives/2007/10/05/mirrormask/ ( )

Helena is a 15 year old girl who hates her life in the circus. She tells her parents she just wants to run away and have a "real life". Unfortunately, Helena's mom then falls ill, and while she's in the hospital, Helena is thrown into a very strange dreamland: a strange, dark realm like a mirror of her own, but the dark side... Helena meets some strange characters while she seeks to find the key to saving her mom and returning to the other side.

This was a quick and fun read. I'm almost wishing I'd opted for the longer screenplay version of this book, simply because the art work included here left me wishing I could see more, and the descriptions of some of the characters and places Helena encountered sounded really freaky!! But yay, shortly after I put it in my Netflix queue, I noticed it's on Starz this month anyway, so I set up TiVo to record it. :-) ( )