Neverwhere: A Novel
by Neil Gaiman
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Book Reviews of Neverwhere: A Novel
Book Review: Pure Magic!
Summary: 5 Stars
Richard Mayhew is one of the most appealing "nice guy protagonists" I've ever run across. He's kind-hearted, unassuming, and altruistic. And it's his altruism that catapults him into another world: London Below.
If you become a denizen of London Below, you're all-but-invisible in London, which is known by those who dwell Below as London Above. But Richard knows nothing of London Below when he and his fussy, relentlessly self-absorbed fiancée, Jessica, are on their way to meet Jessica's boss for dinner and run across an injured young girl in the street. Richard tells Jessica to go on, that he must help the young girl because she's bleeding. Jessica hardly seems to see the young girl and warns Richard, quite nastily, that if he skips dinner to help the girl, their engagement is off.
Arrrgh. No wonder I was glad for Richard to fall through the cracks. It got him away from that awful woman. Alas, I'm getting ahead of myself.
The young girl is from a family of Openers in London Below. Her name, fittingly *wink*, is Door, and she can open all kinds of doors, portals, and passageways. Her family has been killed, and she, the survivor, is on the run from a vile duo of men -- at least they're shaped like men -- whose names are Croup and Vandemar.
Door doesn't tell Richard about London Below, but after he helps her with her injuries and assists her with contacting other people in London Below to get her safely away, he discovers that because he's had extended contact with residents of London Below, people in his world, London Above, can no longer see him. He can't hail a cab to get to work and once he gets there, extremely late, nobody can see him. Jessica no longer knows him. To make matters worse, strangers move into his apartment on top of him as though he weren't even there.
To get to the bottom of his predicament, Richard sets out to find Door, and as fun as things have been up to this point, the real fun starts here. Soon he, Door, Hunter (Door's bodyguard -- a powerful woman who lives to hunt prey), and the self-styled Marquis de Carabas (who owes Door a favor) are journeying together in search of a Key to bring to a wingless Angel, Islington, who holds the key, in the figurative sense, to the mystery of who killed Door's family and also to Richard's way back home to London Above. If they bring Islington the physical Key, he'll give them, in return, their keys to what they want.
But there's a catch. A big catch. In Neverwhere, nothing is what it seems.
The story is laden with mythical overtones, cultural references and social commentary. Richard and his friends in London Below call to mind Dorothy and her companions in The Wizard of Oz. There are allusions to John Milton's Paradise Lost. And London Below strikes me as an allegory for the plight of homeless people, the dispossessed, those who have fallen through the cracks or through the Gap, if you will ("Mind the Gap" means something very different to those who populate London Below than it does to those who live in London Above); people who are all-too-often tragically "invisible" to those who live "normal" lives.
And I love the way in which this book suggests that "normal" life, as it's lived by people who adhere to some sort of Lemming-See, Lemming-Do Life Script, may just be tremendously overrated, at least with regard to society's presumption of its desirability for everyone.
One of my favorite chapters in Neverwhere is where Richard is put to the test to get the Key from the Black Friars, who are its keeper. During his trial, Richard is led to believe that the entire time he's been in London Below, he's actually been wandering about in London, hopelessly insane and disconnected from reality. I shivered all the way through.
I don't want to give anything away, but I loved the ending to this book. I tore through the last few pages, the last few paragraphs, the last few sentences, to find... hmmm, well. Again, I don't want to have any spoilers here. But the ending was perfect, masterful.
Neil Gaiman is an amazing writer with a formidable imagination, and I will run, not walk, to read more of his books.
Book Review: Fantastic, dark, gothic urban fantasy that takes place in London Underground
Summary: 5 Stars
Neverwhere is my favorite book! It's a dark, gothic urban fantasy that takes place in London Underground. While the characters are eccentric and unique, you will find no vampires, weres or faeries in this novel. Instead, Gaiman's fantastical world is a reflection of reality - an alternate reality.
Richard is a young businessman leading a normal existence. On his way to dinner with his fiancé one evening, he stops to rescue a young women who is lying on the sidewalk, bleeding. He takes the girl named Door back to his apartment. The next day, she has fully recovered and asks him to find someone name the Marquis de Carabas. She needs this person to aid her in escaping some of the most evil, vile characters I've ever encountered in fiction - Croup and Vandemar. Once Richard returns to his apartment with the Marquis, the Marquis and Door both vanish immediately.
Richard soon learns that his interactions with these strange people have literally turned him invisible to the world. He loses his job, his apartment, no one recognizes him anymore. He has now become a part of London Below. People who "slip through the cracks" takes on an entirely new meaning in this novel.
Richard sets out to find Door in London Below so he can get his life back. Along the way, he meets Rat Speakers, crosses a dark and mysterious underground bridge that has the tendency to gobble people up as they cross, and finds a Floating Market under Harrods, of all places. He discovers that Lady Door is someone of nobility in this underworld, and she is on a mission to discover the people behind her family's demise. At this point, Richard has no other option but to join her in the quest to bring down the malevolence that is out to destroy this world.
The series of events in this book are intense, grim and treacherous. Richard is quite unremarkable and about as normal as one can be, but he grows on you. His desire to get back to his normal existence in London Above is his main motivation to continue on this insane ride, but the more involved he comes with London Below, the more his chances to leave it diminish. Door is a fantastic character who is way more than she seems.
The descriptions of these areas and people are very visual and detailed. Gaiman's writing is engaging, simplistic and full of wonderful expression. He has a sense of humor when breathing life into his characters. For example, Croup and Vandemar are like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, but cruel and inhumane. They are vile and enjoy bringing pain and death, yet they speak as though they have been raised by the Queen herself. They are extremely eloquent, which is in contrast to their despicable personalities. It's odd and funny. Also, the entire cast of eccentric and odd-ball characters are accepted for who they are in London Below. They can be themselves without being shunned by society. It kinda makes you wonder which reality is better...
When I recently visited London for the first time, it was so great to see all the landmarks talked about in this book. The names of tube stations were especially fun for me because of their use in the book. The Earl of Earl's Court is quite a character in the book, and runs his court on an abandoned Tube train that has its own schedule and route. I wanted to take a picture in front of the Earl's Court Tube sign, but it never happened. That scene is one of my favorites. The Black Friar monks are housed in Blackfriars and Islington is an Angel, an important character in the story.
Neverwhere was actually an urban fantasy TV mini-series in the mid 1990s that aired on BBC. I've watched some of the series through Netflix and it so hokey and ridiculous! But, Gaiman decided to put the TV series into book form, and it is gloriously awesome. It's very much an Alice in Wonderland-esque story, which is probably why I was drawn to it. Alice is my favorite Children's book! In short, Gaiman is a wonderful storyteller, and this story is sure to keep your interest until the very end. This book receives every star I own.
Book Review: A richly imagined urban fantasy
Summary: 5 Stars
Richard Meyhew has a good, respectable life with a good job and a fiancée. It's a typical, boring existence that he doesn't really feel any satisfaction in. His whole world is thrown into turmoil when he kindly helps a bleeding homeless girl despite the protestations of his callous and cold fiancée who would rather continue on to their important meeting than help a fellow human being. He brings the girl to his apartment and she introduces herself as Door. He then encounters two very frightening men, Mr. Vandemar and Mr. Croup, who are searching for the girl, claiming to be her concerned family. Richard continues to protect the girl and she soon leaves his life as abruptly as she entered it. The next day, he tries to go through his daily routine as usual and finds that everyone ignores him. It's as if he doesn't exist at all. His desk at work is empty and his apartment was being sold as he was in it. His only course of action is to find Door and try to get his life back. He has no idea that his journey will take him to London Below, a hidden, dark part of London that people who live above never see. It's populated by the forgotten people of Above, royalty, merchants, angels, assassins, and creatures we had all hoped were just the stuff of nightmares. Richard has to come to terms with this other world and find the hero within himself to survive.
I don't really know why it took me so long to start reading this book. It's been sitting on my shelf for over a year. I guess I figured I could always get to it later. I've read and love most of Neil Gaiman's other works and this one was no different. This is the typical story of a normal, boring guy of the modern age being thrown into a supernatural world he knows nothing about and his struggle to become a hero or die. It's a situation seen very commonly in urban fantasy, but he makes the genre his own. I became completely caught up in this world within our own. I loved that the setting was familiar, such as Harrods, with fantastical goings on. In this case, Harrods served as the place for The Floating Market, a moving bazaar for the inhabitants of London Below to sell their wares unseen by normal people. The book really sparked my interest in London's more mundane places. The writing is incredibly descriptive and elegantly written. The language flows seamlessly and just sucks you in. Sometimes I would completely lose track of time while reading. The world feels complete, but the book just couldn't encompass the whole thing. We just see what the individual characters see and some other glimpses from conversations, but it's still shrouded in mystery at the end of the novel. To me, this is a strength of the novel that it can be expanded upon and the novel is just a small slice of the larger picture.
I truly loved or loved to hate all of the characters without exception. All of them had their own complete stories. I never knew if the secondary characters where on Door and Richard's side or not until the very end. My favorite character was Richard because he started out as a boring businessman with no sense of adventure and grew into so much more because of his exposure to this other dark and savage world. He thought his life was pretty wonderful at the beginning, but he later realizes that his fiancée is a cold person who wishes he were someone else and his job just makes him into a mindless corporate automaton. I really enjoyed following his hero journey throughout the novel.
Neverwhere is a richly imagined urban fantasy that takes the familiar and makes it distorted and dark. I highly recommend it to just about anyone.
Book Review: Enjoyable read
Summary: 3 Stars
*SPOILER WARNING*
I'm really impressed by the worldbuilding skill that Gaiman demonstrates in this novel -- I know I'm going to be thinking twice next time I get on the metro. I had a hard time putting this book down when I first started it: the main character, Richard, is endearing & funny & doesn't suffer from the Gary Stu complex that plagues so many fantasy/scifi texts, and discovering the ways of London Below along with him was tons of fun.
Gaiman definitely has a gift for creating characters who are unique and memorable. Richard was great (I love protagonists who are not all Serious Business), as was the Marquis, Old Bailey, and many of the weird and wonderful denizens of London Below. I didn't like Door particularly, though, with her amazing flame-coloured hair (that "shone in the dawn like burnished copper") and her "odd-coloured eyes" that (gasp!) change colour... I'm confused about why Gaiman fell back on such a trite descriptive route with his heroine. Also, the fox/wolf thing that characterizes the two main antagonists was beaten over and over again quite tiresomely, to the point that when Vande-whatsit "howled like a wolf" (twice) I was rolling my eyes. Oh well. The other characters make up for it!
I'm giving this three stars because, as much as I enjoyed it, there were a couple of aspects that I thought could have used a little more work. While the alternate underground world Gaiman created was original and fresh and unpredictable, the plot itself was unfortunately not: a Revenge For Murder Of Family plotline drives the narrative (with a standard whodunit driving *that* because we don't know who killed them) & a few quests thrown in for good measure (get me the magic key, pass the 3 tests with the Generic Mysterious Order)... meh! I was definitely reading to find out more about London Below than I was to discover whether Door would figure out whodunit and slay them dramatically (which she does). There were lots of fantasy-standard Mysterious Items With Magical Properties that I thought Gaiman could have done away with as well (mysterious silver box, mysterious silver key, mysterious knife, mysterious spear, mysterious feather).
The text could also have used some tighter editing in places, especially to avoid this kind of repetition: "... and approached Old Bailey to embrace him and conclude the deal. The old man averted his face and held his breath until the embrace concluded" -- or "'[...] I can rely on your discretion."' '"You can rely on me, lady.'"
Another little quibble: I would've liked the names to have been reworked/rethought as well, names do not have to relate to occupation or defining trait to quite this extent! Door (opens doors). The Night Bridge (is a dark bridge). The Golden (is golden). Hunter (hunts).
Anyway -- my gripes are minor compared to what makes this book strong, but I did want to make a note of them regardless. All things considered, though, if you want to delve into a world that is as original as it is intriguing (and frequently quite scary), this is definitely worth a read.
Book Review: Brash, charming, funny and edgy
Summary: 4 Stars
A review by Hank Wagner, co-author (with Christopher Golden and Stephen R. Bissette) of the upcoming Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman, due out from St. Martins in October 2008:
Richard Mayhew has resided in London for three years, and, on the whole, has found it an enjoyable place to live. After all, he has good friends, a decent job, and Jessica, his lovely fiancée. One evening, on his way to a formal dinner he is not especially eager to attend, a young woman collapses on the sidewalk in front of the couple. Apparently homeless, the woman is bleeding from deep cuts on her arm and shoulder. Ignoring Jessica's pointed suggestions, he refrains from calling the police. Instead, he carries the woman to his apartment, leaving his irate fiancée to attend the dinner without him.
The young woman, who goes by the unlikely name of Door, is the sole survivor of a brutal attack on her family, perpetrated by Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar, two wicked creatures who take pleasure in inflicting pain and death. Richard helps Door locate a friend, the Marquis de Carabas, who takes her from the apartment before Croup and Vandemar can find her there. Richard is puzzled by these events, but, as the hours pass, they seem less and less real, more like a fantasy he concocted to create excitement in his life.
He returns to work the next day to find that no one notices or acknowledges him. Richard becomes a non-entity, invisible to all but the closest scrutiny--no one, not even his fiancée or best friend, recognizes him. His erasure is so complete he ends up unemployed and homeless. Tracing this dilemma to his encounter with Door, Richard seeks her out, eventually discovering the world that exists under the streets of London, a world inhabited by such colorful personages as the Lord Rat-speaker, a female assassin called Hunter, and a fallen angel named Islington. Richard assists Door in her search for the man who ordered her family killed, and eventually discovers the terrible secrets behind their deaths, secrets that threaten the very existence of London Below.
Brash, charming, funny, and edgy, Neverwhere is Gaiman's novelization of the television series that he wrote for the BBC in the early nineties, his chance, as he has stated, to do things on the page that he wasn't allowed to do on the small screen, expanding on his intriguing concept of a world that exists beneath our own. Featuring covert social commentary, unforgettable characters, a unique setting, sudden violence, heroism and villainy, Neverwhere in its final literary form (the US version is significantly different than and far superior to its UK predecessor, featuring almost 10,000 words not in its previous incarnation) is yet another of Gaiman's modern classics, far surpassing the television series that provided its origin, and spawning a comic book adaptation and discussion of a future feature film version.