American Gods: A Novel
by Neil Gaiman
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Book Summary Information
Author: Neil GaimanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-09-02
ISBN: 0060558121
Number of pages: 624
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780060558123
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of American Gods: A Novel
Book Review: Mixed feelings on Gaiman's long novel
Summary: 3 Stars
After reading Good Omens, I decided to look into other works by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. American Gods seems to be high on many people's favourite books lists, so I borrowed it from a friend and read it.
Shadow is an ex-con who just got out of prison on parole, newly released to the bleak news of his wife's death. On a plane trip home, he meets a strange man who calls himself Wednesday. Wednesday offers Shadow a job working for him, and Shadow accepts, only to learn that Wednesday is an old god (I won't say which one, but it ought to be relatively obvious) and that old gods still live throughout America. Therein lies the premise of American Gods: Gods are created from people's belief in them. When the immigrants came to America, they took their gods with them in their minds, but over time, those gods have been lost and forgotten, slipping into obscurity. Now, many gods have been reduced to living in poverty and working lousy jobs as grifters, prostitutes, and so forth. It turns out that Wednesday is on a mission to rally the old gods into going to war with the "new gods" of media, internet, roads, and other such modern concepts. This set-up leads to the novel's main conflict.
Well, that's a fascinating premise, isn't it? The idea of gods being created from people's belief in them is certainly nothing new, but it's something I always enjoy seeing, and I love the notion of the immigrants bringing their deities over across the ocean, as well as the promising fight between the old gods and the new. Gaiman's ideas are loaded with potential for an exciting, intriguing, inventive story, and I do give him props for the creativity that went into American Gods. Unfortunately, I feel that some of this potential goes to waste, but I'll get to that in a moment. First, I want to extol the good in this novel, because there are good things aplenty about it. The premise, as stated before, is inventive. Various gods from various pantheons appear; it's apparent that Gaiman has done his research, and I applaud him for that. In between chapters, there are several "Coming to America" stories detailing the lives of several groups of immigrants before and after they arrive in America. I found these segments to be among the high-lights of the novel; reading them is akin to seeing someone else's life flash before your eyes. The story of Wututu and Agasu in particular is very poignant and moving.
One can hardly doubt Gaiman's talents as a storyteller; American Gods is packed with bits of ideas which fly by with lightning speed. All throughout reading it, I had moments where I thought, "That was clever..." or "That was thought-provoking..." or "That was an interesting way of looking at something you see everyday in a new light..." One example I'll give here is the scene with the unnamed god (whom everyone forgets the identity of upon meeting him) in Las Vegas, in which an omniscient narrator theorizes that people gamble to lose money, not to win it. Gaiman has a vast imagination and reading this novel is sometimes like slipping on a pair of glasses that distort everything you see around you on a daily basis. By the end of the novel, you can look back at earlier events and see foreshadowing in moments where before you might have just seen an idle conversation or a passing instance of triviality. In the interest of keeping the spoilers as minimal or non-existent as possible within my review, I'll say only that several twists toward the end took me by surprise (though a couple really didn't), which I think is impressive because I'm usually pretty adept at spotting twists. At its heart, American Gods is largely a road trip novel, and it has lots of scenery to share with you. Some readers, undoubtedly, hate the road trip element of the novel, but I found it enjoyable to read about the different places the characters visit.
Others have said that American Gods would be a good novel to re-read because of the twists that are revealed towards the end, and I agree with this assessment; it seems like the perfect fare for a re-read.
So why, then, did I dock two stars? Well, I've said that there is plenty of imagination and creativity to be found here, and I stand by that. But, frustratingly, the novel never feels cohesive to me. It often seems as if many ideas and scenes are thrown at the pages and spliced together without really finding a unifying thread. The book feels packed, very packed, and not necessarily in a good way. It's like a tasty sandwich which is so stuffed that pieces of lettuce and slices of turkey meat are slipping out and dropping on the ground [silly metaphor, I know, but it conveys the idea]. Most of the characters don't feel very thoroughly developed to me. Gaiman paints them with thin brush strokes, defining each by a few distinctive qualities. The old gods sometimes seem a bit like caricatures and stereotypes, while the new gods are even worse; their feelings and their "side", such as it is, is hardly shown at all. So much is left ambiguous, merely hinted at, on both sides, such that it becomes hard to really care if the gods survive or not. Shadow is a very...difficult protagonist, for me. He's an extremely passive character who barely reacts to the most bizarre events conceivable. In some ways, I can understand why Gaiman needed a protagonist like this, because a more reactive character might have slowed down the plot by taking time to ponder over and express shock about the various insane happenings in the novel, and I can understand an author's need to spur the plot along. However, this doesn't work well for the long segments where Shadow is by himself or living a mundane life in between the visits from the gods. The book is even more concerned with Shadow's life and Shadow's adventures than it is with the showdown between the gods, and though he's a good, virtuous, honest protagonist, he's just so stoic that it's hard to care much about him. I found myself struggling through certain parts of this novel -- not because they were difficult to read; indeed, the prose is quite simple, but because I just couldn't muster the energy for an interest in many of Shadow's affairs.
Lastly, the resolution for the "main plot" of this novel is very poor. Again, trying not to spoil any specifics here, but the conclusion is just extremely uninspiring and feels like a cop-out. The reader spends all this time watching Shadow wander about -- on the road, then with Jacquel and Ibis, then in Lakeside -- and nothing happens. Then, finally, towards the end, the book speeds up. Exciting things occur. Twists pop up. You think you're in for a real pay-off that will make all those long, slow sections worthwhile, but the pay-off fizzles out in the most unsatisfying way you can imagine. The sub-plots are wrapped up better than the main storyline. In fact, the Lakeside storyline is wrapped up very well and very efficiently, and its conclusion is probably the part of the novel I most enjoyed and the part I felt the most actual emotion over. Hinzelmann may have been the one character in American Gods I genuinely felt some kind of sympathy for.
In conclusion: creative premise, many intriguing and insightful moments throughout; glimmers of promise, solid and subtle foreshadowing, twists, and plenty of aspects of good storytelling can be found here. But the characters could be deeper and more interesting, more whole, and the story feels like it has too many underdeveloped roots springing out from its base that simply go nowhere and mean nothing. Perhaps American Gods could benefit from being trimmed and tightened, or perhaps Gaiman should stick to smaller scale plotlines until he's better at resolving more "epic" ones. As I understand it, he was still fairly new at novel writing when American Gods was written; I am sure he'll continue to improve and write a more satisfying epic in the future.
As an addendum: I'm not so sure why there are many reviews on here expressing surprise and disgust at the scenes of sexuality and violence in the novel. Is it because Good Omens is lighter (the Pratchett influence, surely), because American Gods is a fantasy novel and people associate fantasy with levity, or...what, exactly? There are a few scenes of sexuality and violence, yes, but I wouldn't say Gaiman goes into any of the most graphic and unpleasant details. The novel skims them and describes them in a passing, casual fashion. Maybe I'm just more jaded than I've realized I am, but I would say the swearing, sex, and violence here are quite light in comparison to some novels and no worse (in fact, not as strong) as your average King or Barker fare. I was at no point shocked or disturbed. I think Gaiman writes these things in a manner that should make them palatable to the most mainstream audience possible, given the subject matter.
Summary of American Gods: A Novel
Released from prison, Shadow finds his world turned upside down. His wife has been killed; a mysterious stranger offers him a job. But Mr. Wednesday, who knows more about Shadow than is possible, warns that a storm is coming -- a battle for the very soul of America . . . and they are in its direct path.
One of the most talked-about books of the new millennium, American Gods is a kaleidoscopic journey deep into myth and across an American landscape at once eerily familiar and utterly alien. It is, quite simply, a contemporary masterpiece.
American Gods is Neil Gaiman's best and most ambitious novel yet, a scary, strange, and hallucinogenic road-trip story wrapped around a deep examination of the American spirit. Gaiman tackles everything from the onslaught of the information age to the meaning of death, but he doesn't sacrifice the razor-sharp plotting and narrative style he's been delivering since his Sandman days.
Shadow gets out of prison early when his wife is killed in a car crash. At a loss, he takes up with a mysterious character called Wednesday, who is much more than he appears. In fact, Wednesday is an old god, once known as Odin the All-father, who is roaming America rounding up his forgotten fellows in preparation for an epic battle against the upstart deities of the Internet, credit cards, television, and all that is wired. Shadow agrees to help Wednesday, and they whirl through a psycho-spiritual storm that becomes all too real in its manifestations. For instance, Shadow's dead wife Laura keeps showing up, and not just as a ghost--the difficulty of their continuing relationship is by turns grim and darkly funny, just like the rest of the book.
Armed only with some coin tricks and a sense of purpose, Shadow travels through, around, and underneath the visible surface of things, digging up all the powerful myths Americans brought with them in their journeys to this land as well as the ones that were already here. Shadow's road story is the heart of the novel, and it's here that Gaiman offers up the details that make this such a cinematic book--the distinctly American foods and diversions, the bizarre roadside attractions, the decrepit gods reduced to shell games and prostitution. "This is a bad land for Gods," says Shadow.
More than a tourist in America, but not a native, Neil Gaiman offers an outside-in and inside-out perspective on the soul and spirituality of the country--our obsessions with money and power, our jumbled religious heritage and its societal outcomes, and the millennial decisions we face about what's real and what's not. --Therese Littleton
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