[Gemma Reilly] A new anthology collated by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, and finds a collection that seamlessly fuses multiple genres .
Only Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio could have pitched the idea for Stories to their publishers and not been met with blank looks, awkward fidgeting and a polite but firm ‘no thanks’. Stories is a marketing department’s nightmare: no obvious genre, no clear indication of which shelf it ought to sit on in Waterstone’s, too literary to be called ‘fantasy’, too fantastical to be called ‘literary’.
And that’s the whole point.
With this anthology of all-new short fiction, Gaiman and Sarrantonio set out to show us that genre classifications are irrelevant and often restrictive - if a tale is gripping enough, the reader won’t care. As it turns out, they’re absolutely right.
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