Archive for May 14, 2008

I remain screwed. No way I'm going to finish this anywhere close to 50. Oh well, I enjoy talking about the books, so I'll keep writing the posts.

My fifth book was…

Neverwhere
by Neil Gaiman

It's a book about a man named Richard Mayhew that moves to London. Once he arrives there he stumbles across a girl wounded on the street and decides to bring her back to his apartment to help her mend. This act sets off a series of events that changes his life forever.

This book was recommended to me by Wassy after we had watched the Stardust movie. I had never read any of Neil Gaiman's previous works so she insisted that I read this book. I'm very glad I did.

The book is set in sort of a reality based fantasy setting, using the backdrop of modern London to create a fantastic world hidden beneath the city. The author does this in such a way that the reader realizes that the world is fantasy based, but there's a nagging suspiscion that everything talked about in the book could actually exist out there. This is further helped by the main character's point of view…a normal guy who's suddenly been thrust into a world he never knew existed. Thus whenever he stammers or questions the actions that are happening around him, he echos the disbelief of the reader as well.

Neil Gaiman's descriptive style is something I noticed right off the bat. The world of the book is rich with detail, however, he doesn't spend 10 pages setting up the room or what the characters look like. Instead, he draws your attention to certain aspects of things in a very calculated order. This more accurately mimics how one actually takes in something they've never seen before, gradually noticing the important details as the scene goes on, and not front loading everything with a lot of description that needs to be waded through in order to get to the point

Warning, minor ending spoilers are located in the next paragraph.

I especially enjoyed the ending of the book. Richard ends up leaving the fantasy world behind and resuming his normal life, that has been changed slightly to give him everything he ever wanted. But the author didn't leave it like that. Because as is the case in life, once you have everything you ever wanted, you often realize that what you thought you wanted wasn't what you wanted at all. And so Richard rejects his perfect life and returns to the world of London Below, where his true path lies.

All in all, an excellent book. I'm going to be picking up some of his other novels for sure.

Read and post comments |
Send to a friend