Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
**
I read assorted Dahls as a child, but didn't get around to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or the film, preferring instead to wait a couple of decades and read its comparatively obscure sequel at an inappropriate age. I doubtless would have got more out of its sub/pre-Hitchhiker's space wackiness back then, but the extended satire and relentless crap puns still would have been boring.
Winston Groom, Gump & Co.
1995 / Ebook / 242 pages / USA
****
I have a lot of affection for the film, but never read the novel (which is evidently crazier). This curiously-unfilmed sequel is a fitting expansion of the modern fable, taking us through another decade or so of alt-history.
Forrest's idiosyncratic narration keeps a brisk pace as he tumbles haplessly between famous scandals and crises, makes and breaks his fortune several times over in line with the American Dream and runs into various famous faces along the way, including a young Tom Hanks. You can virtually see the flowchart as one major historical event hooks loosely into the next, but the more cliched and unlikely the saga gets, the more it made me laugh.
Neil Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano, The Sandman: The Dream Hunters
1999 / Ebook / 124 pages / UK/Japan
Far East pastiche tended to make for my least favourite Sandman issues, so I opted out of this tenth anniversary prose supplement on previous readthroughs of the series. This time around, ignoring a bonus Sandman story seemed absurd, especially when it's paired with such enchanting art. Inevitably, it turned out to be lovely.
I only learned in the afterword that the story wasn't Gaiman's invention, but rather a fairly straight retelling of a specific folk tale that just happened to feature uncanny Sandman parallels. This made me simultaneously appreciate it less and more.
Guy Delisle, Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City (Chroniques de Jérusalem)
2011 / Ecomics / 320 pages / Canada
****
I read this Guy's three previous graphic travel blogs in 2015, but presumably ran out of months to fit the last one in. Better late than never. It's another city I've been to, although my cloistered visit barely scratched the surface of the depressing insanity and I didn't happen to catch a war.
Guy's books would be valuable background reading if you're planning to visit any of these controversial locations, but since they might put you off bothering, they're probably best read as therapy aids during the recovery period.
Mark Alan Miller, Hellraiser: The Toll
*
I knew I was in store for mediocrity when padding out this compendium's page count with an insubstantial interquel. Written by Clive's frequent collaborator, who writes the stories he can't be arsed to, this would have made more sense as a comic miniseries than a novella. But if sense had prevailed, an extracurricular bridge between The Hellbound Heart and The Scarlet Gospels needn't have existed at all.
