Coraline

Coraline (/ˈkɒrəlaɪn/) is a 2002 British fantasy horror children's novella by author Neil Gaiman. Gaiman started writing Coraline in 1990, and it was published in 2002 by Bloomsbury and HarperCollins. It was awarded the 2003 Hugo Award for Best Novella, the 2003 Nebula Award for Best Novella, and the 2002 Bram Stoker Award for Best Work for Young Readers. The Guardian ranked Coraline #82 in its list of 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. It was adapted as a 2009 stop-motion animated film, directed by Henry Selick under the same name.

A young girl named Coraline Jones and her parents move into an old house that has been divided into flats. The other tenants include former actresses, April Spink and Miriam Forcible, and Mr. Bobo (commonly referred as the "Crazy Old Man Upstairs"), who claims to be training a mouse circus. The flat beside Coraline's, which lies behind a big brown door, remains empty.

During a rainy day she discovers a locked door in the living room, which has been bricked up. As she goes to visit her neighbors, Mr. Bobo relays her a message from the mice warning her against going through the door. Spink and Forcible read Coraline's fortune on tea leaves and agree that she is in danger before giving her a lucky adder stone that is "good for bad things". Despite these warnings, Coraline decides to unlock the door when she is home by herself and finds the brick wall behind the door gone. In its place is a long passageway, which leads to a flat identical to her own, inhabited by her Other Mother and Other Father, button-eyed and exaggerated doppelgängers of her parents. In this “Other World”, Coraline finds everything to be better than her own – the Other Parents are attentive, her toy box is filled with sentient toys and the world's counterparts of Spink and Forcible perform a cabaret show in their flat. She even finds the feral black cat that wanders around the house in the real world can talk, however she learns he is not of the Other World; he only travels from one world. He warns Coraline of the imminent danger, but Coraline pays him no heed.

The Other Mother offers Coraline a chance to stay in the Other World forever, if Coraline will allow buttons to be sewn over her eyes. Coraline is horrified and returns back through the door to go home. Upon her return to her apartment, Coraline finds her real parents are missing, eventually discovering that the Other Mother has kidnapped them. Though frightened of returning, Coraline goes back to the Other World to confront the Other Mother and rescue her parents. In the garden, the Cat advises Coraline to challenge the Other Mother, as “her kind of thing loves games and challenges”. The Other Mother tries to convince Coraline to stay, but she refuses and is detained behind a mirror as a punishment.

In the darkness, she meets a trio of ghost children, each from a different era, who had allowed the Other Mother, truthfully an evil being known as "The Beldam", to lure them into her world and sew buttons over their eyes, as well as recounting how she eventually stopped loving them and cast their spirits aside. The ghost children implore Coraline to avoid their fate and to help find the essences of their souls so that they can finally escape the Other World and move on to the afterlife. After the Beldam releases Coraline from the mirror, Coraline proposes a game in which she must find the essences of the ghost children’s souls and her parents, which are hidden throughout the Other World. If Coraline wins, she, her parents and the ghost children may go free; if not, Coraline will stay and finally accept the Beldam's offer of having buttons sewn over her eyes.

Coraline goes through the Other World and overcomes all the Beldam’s obstacles, using her wits and the adder stone to locate the souls' essences. At the close of the game, the ghost children warn her that even if Coraline wins, the Beldam will not let them go. Having deduced her parents are imprisoned in a snow globe nearby, Coraline tricks the Beldam by saying her parents are behind the door in the drawing room. As the sorceress opens the door, Coraline throws the cat at her, grabs the snow globe, and escapes to the real world with the key. In doing so, she forces the door shut on one of the Beldam's hands, amputating it. Back in her home, Coraline finds her parents safe and have mysteriously forgotten about their capture.

That night, Coraline has a dream in which she meets the ghost children before they are allowed to finally rest in peace. They warn her that her task is still not done as the Beldam's amputated hand is in the real world, attempting to steal the key needed to unlock the door that connects the two worlds. Coraline goes to an old and bottomless well in the woods by her house, luring the hand there with the key and casting both down the well. Coraline returns home, victorious, and prepares to go about the ordinary life she has come to accept and love.

Gaiman has acknowledged the short story "The New Mother", by English novelist Lucy Clifford, as one of two major influences on the novella. In his study of the novella, David Rudd argues that the work plays and riffs productively on Sigmund Freud's concept of Unheimlich ("the Uncanny").