Neverwhere

Neil Gaiman pretty much always charms me, and perhaps never more than he does here. This urban fairy tale is a love letter to London, a fantasy of the terrifying, surprising, eventful lives of a city's invisible people and creatures, and also an opportunity to watch the most ordinary of men become a valiant knight and move from what is comfortable and pleasant to an existence that is as precarious as it is exciting, filled with the evil of the human soul and the surprises of chaotic magic. I kept thinking of the moment in my early 20's when I had to decide if I was going to continue to travel the world with the possessions on my back (I had been doing that for nearly two years at the time) or "grow up" and go to law school. I guess most show more people have that sort of reckoning at some point in their lives, but most of us are not deciding between a life in finance and a life with a princess in need, magic keys, terrifying female mercenaries, self-proclaimed counts, fallen angels, and merchants selling garbage, pain-infliction, and curry. (I won't tell you which life our hero, Richard Mayhew, ultimately chose. Those who know me know I chose law school but I long ago stopped practicing law, and I still travel (though in a different way), so it is hard to say which of my choices won in the end.)

In the past few weeks I have been leaning into more escapist reading (including actual escapist literature -- looking at position descriptions for career opportunities in Canada) and this novel carried me away. For a book that turns our gazes to a city's unhoused, to murder, and to torture to be an escapist read says something great about the author, something terrible about real life, or both.

I read this and listened by turns. I will listen to Neil Gaiman narrate anything at all. Here though, where he voiced characters you can tell appeared just so in his imagination when he wrote this story, it is a total joy. That said, when I would change to the print version I kept finding myself paging back because I had missed things and because the language on the page was satisfying in a different way. His writing is really intricate. This book took me much longer to get through than books typically do because I found I was listening, and then going back and reading the same material. Basically, I read this twice. Both formats fully satisfied me on their own, but I definitely got more satisfaction from doing both than I would have gotten by doing either separately. show less

For mild-mannered office drone Richard Mayhew, stopping to help an injured stranger has a multitude of consequences- some good, some bad, but all undeniably bizarre. The stranger in question is Door (yes, that’s actually her name,) a waif of many talents who resides in the underground wonderland of London Below, and is on the run from the duo of thugs who killed her family. Door’s special ability is that of ‘opening,’ i.e. the ability to open any door or simply conjure one into being just by concentrating.

Richard has a big heart but is a bit of a pushover and is totally out of his element while scurrying after Door, who feels obliged to protect him, through the cavernous kingdom of the Underside, a realm that exists beneath show more London. Together they meet a plethora of odd characters- the beautiful and icy Hunter, the smooth-talking Marquis de Carabas, and the predatory but lovely ‘Velvets,’ to name a few. On the run, from sinister antagonists. Richard must find his inner strength if he is to survive.

This is my first book by Neil Gaiman (shame!) and I found it to be a quite captivating work. With a mind-blowing fantasy world full of shady characters and a pair of uproariously weird villains such as Mr. Vandemar and Mr. Croup, how can a novel fail to be supremely entertaining? I liked Richard as a protagonist, but I often found him to be a bit of a burden to the group, such as when he blindly allows himself to be bested by a seductive female creature and falls to pieces when his fear of heights is tested.

“Neverwhere” is witty and fun and has a weird and wonderful mythology behind it. I found the writing to sometimes be alternately repetitive and vague (so that I had trouble picturing the characters and situations) and the author tended to use extremely strange similes that didn’t really work in the context. The last chapter went on too long as well, compared to the fast paced majority of the book.

Apparently the television series “Neverwhere” (1996) came first- Neil Gaiman wrote the book in order to add the extra substance that couldn’t be featured in the series. I’m torn about watching the series- on one hand it’s tempting to see the origins of the book, on the other hand I have read it was an extremely cheap (and some say badly-acted) production, and part of me wants to imagine the story rather than see it played out on screen.

I love how ambiguous and odd the beings who inhabit the Underside are- if they agree to help Richard and his friends it will be entirely for their own reasons, not out of loyalty or nobility or any moral-based traits. With the odd exception, the creatures of London below are not really good, nor very bad for that matter. The just are. They want to be left alone, and they’ll provide help when it’s in their best interest. But do the people of London above, our world, really support Richard and his moral center either?

When you look at mankind’s reaction to discord (Richard’s fickle girlfriend, Jessica, futilely tries to coerce him to leave the bloodied Door in the middle of the sidewalk to get to an important dinner,) the unwashed underground wackos don’t seem so otherworldly after all. “Neverwhere” might in part be a commentary on London’s less privileged classes, but it doesn’t feel like a lecture. It’s unabashedly imaginative, vibrantly alive, and just as wildly original as a modern fantasy novel should be. show less

Have you ever walked through the teeming multitudes of a city street, unseen, unremarked, and unacknowledged? Have you ever walked by a panhandler, watched the crowd part and flow around him, and yet see none of the members of this steady flow of humanity acknowledge or even seem to observe him? What if you became as unmarked as this panhandler, then slipped deeper and deeper into this anonymity until not even your closest friends could recognize your features? What would happen to people who became invisible to the rest of the world?

Richard is an ordinary man with an ordinary past and an ordinary life, a man who takes comfort in the mundane and is content to be ordered about by his domineering fiancée. But when a terrified and injured show more girl stumbles into his path, Richard makes what might be his first independent decision, his first resistance against the ordinary flow of his life: he makes the choice to rescue and protect this unknown girl. Immediately, his reality begins to shatter, and in the cracks between the mundanity of his past life, he begins to discover the peculiar world of London Below. Catapulted into strangeness, Richard begins a quest into the magical and often grotesque environs of London Below to find the girl who shattered his peace and to regain his old life.

Neverwhere is an exploration of the fantastic, an adventure, an escape into the creative and bizarre and dangerous, and, perhaps above all, the story of a man discovering himself.

I loved this book: I loved its lyrical writing,its eccentric characters, its themes, its explorations of mythic archetypes, its symmetries, and even the threads of the plot left untied and unfinished. To enjoy this book, however, I think you need to be comfortable with what Christopher Moore calls a "beta male" protagonist. Richard begins the novel as generally ineffective, hapless, accommodating, and passive, and although his adventures transform him, he does not go through a spandex-wearing-cool-car-driving-Clark-Kent-style metamorphosis. Instead, after he makes his first fateful decision, he is pushed and prodded through most of the events of the novel without even having choices to make. hover for spoiler Personally, I tend to find beta-male characters endearing, although I refuse to analyse what that indicates about my personality. I had some amount of difficulty relating to the main female protagonist, but I found many of the other characters to be vivid, complex, and fascinating. I loved the most vocal villains, Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar. There is a reason why this variety of henchman duo has become a common motif in movies and books. They make a perfect pair: Mr. Croup is short, thickset, vivacious, unctuous, and locquacious, while Mr. Vandemar is tall, hulking, stoic, silent, fond of understatement, and entirely unable to comprehend humorous wordplay. Both are violent psychopaths, and unlike Pratchett's Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip, their violent excesses are often so gruesome that, while they remain humorous, they are also frightening and horrifying. I also thought that the Marquis de Carabas was fascinating: he embodies most of the characteristics of the Trickster archetype, yet had unexpected depths. The characters felt so real that I was genuinely shocked by some of the reveals. hover for spoiler

I also thought that London Below was enthralling. It captured the atmosphere and identity of London, yet also caught the best characteristics of the old fairy tales: that haunting familiarity mixed with absolute strangeness that we find only in dreams. London Below also uses one of the aspects of the traditional faery world that I love best: the currency of favours and debt. In London Below, favours are bartered and sold, and the bonds that they create are absolute and insoluble. Like the old fey, the literal words used are of utmost importance: it is easy to trick and lie by omission and yet speak the absolute truth. The symmetry of the world and plot were intensely satisfying, as were the details of the world, but I think I loved the aspects left unknown and unexplored even more. The concept of the night as a mysterious entity in its own right, the unknown fate of some of the characters hover for spoiler, lent a certain reality and a bitter-sweet tinge to the flow of the story.

Overall, not only did I love almost every aspect of Neverwhere, but it has given me a new-found appreciation for Gaiman's imagination and skill as a writer. Definitely a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the origins of Urban Fantasy. show less

I tried to read this awhile ago in book form but just couldn't seem to get into it. Knowing that some books are better listened to than read (for me, at least), and having the chance to hear the author, Neil Gaiman himself, doing the reading, I decided to give it another chance. Oh, my! I'm so glad I did! It was nothing short of magical! Gaiman is one of the few authors who can (and really should) read his own work. He infuses the characters with so much life and the story with so much verve, at least the two I've heard so far (this one and "The Graveyard Book"). Shuddery villains, villainous heroes (and heroines), heroic nobodies, angels and demons and monsters galore. Made me want to try and find a way into that shadowy, glittery, show more dangerous underworld of Neverwhere. show less

Whenever I travel lately, it seems that I always reach for a Neil Gaiman novel to keep me occupied and happy on the inevitably tedious journey through the airports of the world, so for this latest sojourn I picked up an old favourite. Neverwhere is a particularly good travel book because you can play witness to Richard Mayhew’s journey to London Below (and back) and contemplate the magic of how travel can change you - or, in some cases, bring you back to yourself. Richard is lucky enough to find himself in one of the world’s most magical cities, but he is mired in mundanity with a tediously straightforward job, a fiance who is less than inspiring, and a life that seems to be plodding slowly but surely towards a predictable end. show more Luckily for Richard, he proves himself to have a heart of gold (even if it flounders occasionally), and a chance encounter with the Lady Door begins his travels to a London glimpsed by few Upworlders. His journey follows a pretty straightforward hero’s quest, but in typical Gaiman fashion it is the unique and fascinating characters, situations, and details that keep the story turning page after page. Even after having read the story (and seen the BBC mini-series) a number of times, Richard’s story never seems to dull and I am constantly wanting to hear more about the myriad of characters who show up throughout London Below. This world is more than can be contained in a single novel, and I am surely glad that we get a small extrapolation in an extended short and a forthcoming whole novel soon! show less

Neverwhere – Gaiman

Audio performance by Neil Gaiman
4 stars

I like Neil Gaiman reading Neil Gaiman.
In this rendition the bizarre setting seemed perfectly natural, the evil characters were delightfully evil, the marquis de Carrabas oozed with condescending superiority. Richard Mayhew bumbled about London Above and London Below, completely clueless, but always on the side of the light. In the end, I was relieved that even Richard could figure out that life ‘above’ with a Jessica was definitely not the best of all possible worlds.
This story has a good share of graphic violence and detailed descriptions of ugliness and suffering. I’m generally put off by such things in a story. I don’t need a Disney interpretation, but with show more fantasy, I’m usually looking for something comfortable. Gaiman takes me to the edge of squeamish discomfort before he injects just the right touch of satiric humor or the unexpected relief of a positive plot twist. I didn’t like this one quite as much as The Graveyard Book, but it was still very entertaining.
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First of all, Gaiman authors books you can't put down, so prepare yourself a good space of time. There is a lot of ghoulish action, but also a pure and gentle soul (Door) who is on a quest. While the 2 executioners are always evil, their conversation has moments that pique. No one else seems to be who they appear to be, and Richard, who somehow got lost in the Underground world, continues to be lost and confused for much of the book.
The main question is: what are we really looking for?