Though the collection features seven apparently separate stories, they each repeat motifs from each other, so I think it would detract from them to read them separately. Moving from story to story was like waking up from a complicated dream; I found I couldn't recount exactly what I'd just read, but as I read on something occurred to remind me of the previous tale. The stories are equally beautiful and grotesque (which is capture brilliantly in the illustrations of this edition). At no point did they aim to be realistic, but that never made them less absorbing, and they felt true in all the ways that matter (the characters felt real, though they moved through an unreal world).

Edit: I forgot to mention that this book contains one of my favourite conceptions of the Christian afterlife & the meaning of life. The idea is presented in one of the earlier stories, and alluded to again later. Heaven. Hell and Purgatory will not be populated by real people, but by the fictional characters they create. Humans were created, therefore, for the purpose of imagining and thereby creating these citizens of the afterlife.