Gorey’s tales, I began to see, can be divided into two types: overt and enigmatic. In his overt tales, like The Gashlycrumb Tinies or The Loathsome Couple, Gorey leaves little to the imagination. It is clear what is happening in each amusingly macabre sentence and illustration. (Gorey, incidentally, did not like the word “macabre,” perhaps due to having heard it too much in interviews.) In his enigmatic tales, by contrast, something, perhaps quite a bit, is left to the imagination. [...] The Curious Sofa, with its clever yet inscrutable ending, is also one of these. Gorey’s work had once reminded me of Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas or Neil Gaiman’s Coraline; now, despite the extreme brevity of his books, his work seemed darker and more complex than both. I loved it.