Neverwhere: A Novel

Gaiman has always been hit or miss for me. Some of his books I love, some I don’t care for, so I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about Neverwhere, outside of the fact that there’s something deeply satisfying about holding the illustrated version—something about thick little hardcovers is just the best feeling. Anyway, Neverwhere is a not subtle in its message: the homeless are invisible to those who want to pretend the “problem” doesn’t exist—but make it magic that has a very Tim Burton feel, because this is Gaiman, after all. When Richard sees one of those who have fallen through the cracks—a citizen of London Below—and proceeds to help her, it sets off a chain of events that plunges him into London Below and makes him just as invisible to London Above, and his old life, as the rest of the characters in this novel. In which there a lot, all of which are unique and magical and so beautifully distinct from each other. I even loved Mr Vandemar and Mr Croup who are unequivocally terrible people, but they are written in such a creative way that I couldn’t help but love them just as much as Richard and our heroine Door, with her opal-colored eyes. I loved the prose of Neverwhere, it read almost like it was meant for children when it’s so clearly not. There’s this whimsy to it, alongside Gaiman’s love of a metaphor and simile, which made the whole style just as magical as London Below. Speaking of, I loved the characters that populated this secret place. Gaiman was able to weave in a complex mystery and twists and turns into something that should have been an otherwise very straight forward plot: find out why/who is after Door and killed her family, and get Richard back to London Above. Gaimain, in this particular book anyway, is able to make you love and care for a character so, so deeply and then cut you to the core by taking them away all in one chapter. He’s also able to play with your mind about what is truly reality for Richard, and who should our main characters trust in a way that really added to the twists at the end. It was masterfully done! I will say that I read A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab before reading Neverwhere, and after reading Gaiman’s book, it’s really easy to see where Schwab got a lot of inspiration for that series: everything from the different types of Londons that only one person really seems to be able to move between, and even a certain magical coat. I’m not mad about this at all! It’s clear that Schwab idolizes Gaiman, and her writing is an homage to that without being a rip off. Its just something to keep in mind if you read this and things start sounding… familiar. All in all, this was a perfectly satisfying read—from just holding the book, to the perfect illustrations, the magical whimsy of the writing, and the cast of incredible characters that inhabit London Below. The story is dark, but with moments of tenderness and humor so I never felt bogged down to the point where I could no longer appreciate the imagery. Gaiman’s fantasy is always a reflection of reality with fantastic elements, so the ugly parts of our world are still present, but made magic so when you read you don’t necessarily feel preached to. But I can definitely understand why this style may not be for everyone—Gaiman doesn’t describe anything in a straightforward manner, instead almost tricking the reader into visualizing these delightful things. Which I loved, personally! This book was quirky and deep, fantastic and the kind of realistic urban fantasy I didn’t know I was missing until now, which is why this gets an easy 5 stars from me!

So the blurb says "Richard Mayhew is a young man with a good heart and an ordinary life, which is changed forever when he stops to help a girl he finds bleeding on a London sidewalk." Now, if you're expecting a knight in shining armor with a quest to save the damsel in distress, you can just drop this book. Because Richard Mayhew is the one who needs saving. Richard leaned against a wall, and listened to their footsteps, echoing away, and to the rush of the water running past on its way to the pumping station of East London, and the sewage works. "Shit," he said. And then, to his surprise, for the first time since his father died, alone in the dark, Richard Mayhew began to cry. Characters Wow, I'm so used to perfect, alpha males as MCs that I was totally taken aback to have met Richard Mayhew. He's the sweet, "safe" boyfriend who would make a dull, henpecked husband in the future. He's a bit of a muddlehead - the kind who messes up his appointments and locks himself out. Richard Mayhew is, for lack of a better word, a total pussy. "Richard began to understand darkness: darkness as something solid and real, so much more than a simple absence of light. He felt it touch his skin, questing, moving, exploring: gliding through his mind. It slipped into his lungs, behind his eyes, into his mouth . . ." Then we have the other characters. Lady Door, the bleeding girl, has the ability to open doors. Now, don't let my ineloquence fool you - it's an extraordinary gift. However, she's a total *yawn*. Her companions; marquis de Carabas and Hunter are much stronger and notable characters. And the antagonists were really dark, violent, magnificently thought-out characters. It was like as if Neil Gaiman had spent more time developing the secondary characters than the MCs. Storyline and Writing I have never heard of Neil Gaiman before this. But one fine day, the local bookstore had dedicated a whole section just for his books. And that got me intrigued. Further probing around GR got me to believe that Neil Gaiman is a magnificent storyteller. It was evident, from beginning to end, that he is excellent at creating this parallel universe. "So the day became one of waiting, which was, he knew, a sin: moments were to be experienced; waiting was a sin against both the time that was still to come and the moments one was currently disregarding." How do I categorise Neverwhere? I grew up reading Roald Dahl's children's books and watching the movie adaptation. Do you remember the movie "The Witches"? It scared the hell out of me. I could vaguely remember the part where the little boy was forced to drink this potion that turned him into a mouse. I couldn't help thinking about that movie while reading Neverwhere. It gave me the same chills as The Witches. Neverwhere reminds me of Roald Dahl's, ironically, children's fiction: dark and violent. Conclusion: Don't let the MCs deter you from attempting this well-written piece by Neil Gaiman!

Wow, what an unusual book! After reading American Gods, I really shouldn't be surprised, as Neil Gaiman is certainly making a name for himself in the modern, urban fantasy genre. In this novel, we are introduced to a cast of characters that are among the most original, unusual and thought provoking I've ever encountered. The basis of the novel is the existence of an "underground" London, inhabited by all those who have fallen between the cracks of society. Designated as London Below, as opposed to London Above, these highly unusual inhabitants make their way through sewers, underground passages and subterranean vaults and caverns, as well as abandoned tube stations. In addition, things and people aren't "normal" in London Below. Time and space do not follow the same rules as London Above. Elements of minor magic exist and animals take on human traits (for example, rats are exalted and can communicate). Once relegated to London Below, there is no return to the surface. Inhabitants virtually cease to exist and can move unseen and unrecognized on the surface. There were moments when I thought Gaiman went a little too far in his fantasy world, but by and large, it worked for me. The characters in the novel are amazingly well presented and fleshed out. The subject of the novel, Richard Mayhew, a drone of sorts in the London financial community, gets drawn into the underworld through accidental contact with one of its denizens, an unlikely heroine by the name of Lady Door. There, he undergoes a metamorphosis of sorts, as he undertakes the quest that is the backbone of the novel. There are elements of medieval custom and society, as well as characters that you would find in 17th century England. Most engaging to me, however, were a pair of supernaturally gifted murderous cut throats by the name of Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar who appear frequently throughout the story. As Mr. Croup explains, ""We are, after all, famed across the entirety of creation for our skills in the excruciatory arts" When their methods are questioned by their "employer" and they are accused of being unprofessional, Mr. Croup proudly explains: "Unprofessional? Us? Sir. Might I with due respect remind you that Mister Vandemar and myself burned down the city if Troy? We brought the Black Plague to Flanders. We have assassinated a dozen kings, five popes, half a hundred heroes and two accredited gods. Our last commission before this was the torturing of an entire monastery in sixteenth century Tuscany. We are utterly professional." There is actually an honest to goodness angel (Islington) who evolves into a fascinating character. There are references to Atlantis and other mythological personages and places. And while there is ample violence and scenes of brutality, as Mr. Vandemar notes at one point, ""Can't make an omelette without killing a few people".

There are some books that I would never even have thought of buying if it hadn’t been for Instagram. This applies to Fantasy more than any other genre. I don’t know why that is, because I have read some fantastic books belonging to the genre during the last year or so. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman is one of them. Neverwhere is the story of Richard Mayhew, who moves to London from a small Scottish town. At first overwhelmed in such a big city, he soon settles into a routine and his awe with London recedes. Then he meets Jessica, who is way out of his league and turns him into a scatter brain, and Richard finds himself engaged to a woman much more ambitious and determined than him. One evening, when everything seems to be going wrong for Richard, he stumbles upon a bleeding girl on the street, and stops to help her. If things were bad before, they become unbearably worse after his decision to defy Jessica and help a fellow human in need. For the injured girl is the Lady Door from Neverwhere. Neverwhere is the shadowy reflection of London which exists underneath the London known to man. It is a world with monsters and assassins, angels and demons, and everything that has ever slipped through the cracks of the real world into this underground world. Richard is drawn unwillingly into this world when it seems that he has stopped existing in London Above. Now he has to stick to Door and her shady companions if he ever wants to go back to his former life. But the Lady Door is on a suicide mission to avenge the death of her family at the hands of the most gruesome and terrifying murderers that history has ever seen, and it seems likely that Richard will just be one of the casualties of this crazy quest. As grave and serious as the story sounds, it is anything but. It is irreverant and witty, and I fell in love with most of the characters. While Richard is funny as the clueless man being taken on an adventure against his will, and Door is admirable in her quest to find out the truth, it is the Marquis de Carabas who steals the show! And yes, the Marquis is named after the fictional Marquis from the very famous fairy tale, Puss in Boots. Neverwhere is a roller coaster ride of adventure, as the motley crew consisting of Richard, Door, de Carabas and Hunter, the bodyguard, dashes across London Above and Neverwhere to find the answers needed to solve their problems. The characters they meet on the way are no less remarkable. Whether it is Anaesthesia, the rat girl, the Earl from Earl’s Court or the Angel Islington, every character is tongue-in-cheek and batshit crazy! It would be remiss of me if I don’t mention the two terrifying murderers who are after Door from the beginning of the book. They are the main villians, and as villainous as a villian can ever hope to be. Maybe even more. They are Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar. They are filthy and disgusting, with terrible table manners and no sense of humour. And they are hilarious! Even when they are dismembering and torturing living things, their banter doesn’t stop. At the end of the edition I was reading, is a bonus story about my favourite, Marquis de Carabas. And it was a bonus, because I have not had my fill of this wonderful, mad world called Neverwhere, and would love to visit it again some time. A fun read to take your mind off real world problems.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman is, for lack of a better description, The Sandman comics in novel form. Neverwhere may not have Gods, or dream weavers, or scary men with teeth for eyes, but it is a creative exploration of dreams and pure imagination. And unfortunately, I was not a fan. I know, I know, I can already see the readers foaming at the mouth. “How can you NOT like Neverwhere? Neil Gaiman is the greatest writer that ever lived!” My issue with the book has nothing to do with Neverwhere’s writing. Neil Gaiman’s prose remains consistently magical and is full of little details that make London Below come alive. But before I go into why I wasn’t a fan, you should know what Neverwhere is about. The plot is about Richard Mayhew, an ordinary guy. He works at an office, has a regular 9 to 5 job, and he’s with a girlfriend that tolerates his existence. One night, Richard encounters a girl on the run from two men. Richard’s tries to save the girl and ends up transported into an alternate reality called, London Below. When Richard attempts to resume his normal life by going to work or visiting his girlfriend, he quickly realizes that everyone is ignoring him. He leaves and goes to his apartment, but when he gets there he finds it occupied by strangers. Whenever he tries to speak to his best friend or his girlfriend, they say one word to him and move on as if he didn’t exist. This alternate reality had somehow turned Richard into a ghost. Stuck with no apartment, no money, no job, no girlfriend, Richard decides to find the girl who got him in this mess in the first place. Her name is Door. Door is the daughter of some nobility in London below and also has the capability to open . . . you guessed it, doors. But when Richard finally meets Door, she tells him that she can’t bring him back to his home dimension. Richard’s quest to return to the London Above begins. This is the premise of Neverwhere. So what is the London Below? To describe it simply, London Below is what would happen if you fell asleep on the subway and had a nightmare. It is a twisted, non sensical version of London where “Minding the Gap” means watch out for the monster that lives in the gap between train and the platform. The rats are messengers for the homeless. Junk and random items can be bartered (including your life). And a street name like, Knightsbridge could literally mean that knights are guarding it. London Below is what would happen if underground subways were towns and marketplaces. And it is this underground theme that ultimately left me uninterested in the book. As a former rider of trains, there is nothing fun or enjoyable to me about a world built around the underground. Sadly, it wasn’t just the world that disinterested me, the characters also left me detached from the experience. The Marquis De Carabas was written as a cool and suave character; a man so interesting, he needed to have his own bonus content at the back of the book. I did not read these pages because the Marquis did not interest me. Hunter, a woman who often protected and saved Richard from certain doom, also failed to engage me. I liked Door well enough and I loved the villain, but Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar embodied a type of aesthetic and style that bored me. The irony is, the book wasn’t boring. Unlike Ocean at the End of the Lane which has a dreadfully slow beginning, Gaiman’s Neverwhere moves at a steady pace. It’s not too fast, not too slow, just right. Unfortunately, underground worlds are a huge turn off for me, no matter how creative or well written they are. Neverwhere felt like a universe that could exist in a Steampunk setting and I hate Steampunk. And this, I understand, is a matter of personal taste. It is the equivalent of a die-hard medieval fantasy novel reader trying to force themselves to read a Star Wars book. It doesn’t matter if the characters or plot is interesting, the world will fail to suck in the reader. Neverwhere failed to suck me in. Had I been a fan of this underground world I would have called Neverwhere a great book, easily 5 stars. Still, for those of you who do like underground themed worlds, then I would highly recommend giving Neverwhere a read. Neil Gaiman, even when he produces work that fails to engage me, is still an amazing writer and I can’t imagine giving Neverwhere anything less than . . . 4 out of 5 stars.

Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere takes the reader on a playful trip through a fantastical world that exists beneath our feet. I am not familiar with Gaiman’s entire catalog, having only read American Gods and Neverwhere, but it was quite obvious to me that this was one of his earlier books. The concept behind the story and the possibilities it opened up initially violently grabbed my attention and and held it fast. However, as the story progressed, the flat characters, moments that were silly for the sake of being silly, and lazy writing dulled the edge of my interest. I feel like with another rewrite and a little more aggressive editing, this book could have been something special. In the end, though, the story was interesting enough to keep me reading, and I would be comfortable recommending the book to anyone interested in a unique blend of myth, light-hearted story telling, and urban fantasy. The Bad: 1. The writing itself in the book often struck me as lazy and sometimes amateurish. I came across multiple sentences that employed “had had” as well as copious amounts of commas and the word and. If I recall correctly I came across a sentence when seven instances of the word and in it. While not really incorrect, these sentences could have easily been rewritten to look and read much cleaner. Additionally, some of his descriptions struck me as things that I would read while grading a high school creative writing assignment. “It had been like watching Emma Peel, Bruce Lee, and a particularly vicious tornado, all rolled into one and sprinkled with a generous helping of a mongoose killing a king cobra.” 2. The characters were boring, cliché cookie cutter characters. Richard is your average bumbling hero, a la Arthur Dent. After him we have the magical teenage girl out to solve the murder of her family, the sexy and self confident badass hunter, and the witty rogue of questionable loyalty. The only characters in the book I really enjoyed were the two most present bad guys. They were comfortably evil and their general demeanors were quite amusing, unfortunately they were not enough to prop up the rest of the cast. 3. The ending was painfully predictable and the book finishes with little more than a whimper. The Good: 1. The setting for the story is quite interesting. Beneath some large cities, an “under city” exists, in this case, London Below. These under cities are filled with magical people who have fallen through the cracks of the city above and cease to exist there. All of the denizens of London Below have some kind of magical or supernatural ability, ranging from the mundane to the miraculous. 2. The pacing and storytelling was done well enough that, despite the quirky grammar and run on sentences, I was able to immerse myself in the book. While the story was not immeasurably unique, and I was not left with a book hangover after I finished; I felt like reading Neverwhere was time well spent. The Meh: 1. Gaiman’s Britishness is pretty prevalent in the book, and I tend not enjoy overly British things. This is not an exceptionally bad thing, but more of a personal taste. And I have to admit I feel a bit silly griping about it—the book is set in London after all. Synopsis: Richard Mayhew is just your average, slightly-bumbling guy. He’s got a nagging fiancé and a fairly run-of-the-mill existence. While on the way to an important dinner date one night, a filthy and bloody girl suddenly appears in the street before him and his fiancé. Jessica demands they ignore the girl, but Richard simply can’t. She refuses to go to the hospital so Richard cancels his date with Jessica and takes the girl to his apartment. The girl, known as Door, heals miraculously overnight, and shortly afterwards leaves Richards care, but just after she’s gone Richard discovers that he doesn’t seem to exist anymore. In order to reclaim his life he will have to set off into the bowels of London Below, where he will encounter Velvets, Sewer Folk, Rat Speakers, and even an Angel.

There are some people who say that London has no heart and if it has a soul it was sold, wrapped and delivered to the devil a long time ago. It is no use arguing with these people; what ails them will not be cured by reason or logic. It is quite possible that there is no cure, that they may be saved but never healed. I am convinced, though, that if there is a cure, it will come in the form of something very much like Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. The first thing that the former doubter will notice is that London, far from having no heart and no soul, has a surfeit of them. For, like the doctor from Gallifrey, London has two hearts and, unlike the doctor, two souls to match. Within one heart and one soul lives the magical, infinite variety of London, with its evocative place names, its ghosts of eccentrics, stuffed shirts, urchins and poets, heroes and cowards; and its streets and alleys that echo with footsteps long buried beneath rubble and stone. It is this London that Gaiman plays with in Neverwhere. His London Below is not a parallel London. It is an intersecting world, coloured and shaped by London Above. There, in that intersecting world, the Seven Sisters are a fabled family, not a place; Serpentine is a feared but sensual figure; and just to keep the balance skewed, atop Centrepoint lives a denizen of Below who is only comfortable with distance between him and the ground beneath. And as if part of the reality of both, London's cavernous sewers run like a fetid umbilical cord between London Above and London Below. This is a wonderful book, a book of imagination and inspired storytelling. Gaiman has a knack for seeing the curious and odd in the ordinary. And despite the fact that most of his female leads are all variations of the same character, there are so many more who are delightful, even when they are not completely original or fresh. The dark ally, the Marquis de Carabas (from Perrault's Le Maître Chat, ou Le Chat Botté (Puss in Boots to us) is a great creation; the implacable murderers, Croup and Vandemar are a classic villain combo - one smart and eloquent, the other a simple, single-minded brute - who are Gaiman's vehicles for the best comic lines in the book. Gaiman's best works are fairytales (or "otherness" tales?) that are not weighed down with gravitas: Stardust, The Graveyard Book, Neverwhere and even his collaboration with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens . Each one of them is a better book, a greater feat of the imagination, than his slightly ponderous and self-consciously pop American Gods. In his otherness tales, his skill with language joins with his talent for story and his own alchemy of imagination transforms skill and talent into gift.

Gaiman’s horror is as chilling as it gets. In the midst of this fantasy-adventure tale, we must either avert our eyes or confront evil straight on in its multiple forms, one of them quite beautiful. “Neverwhere” is London-below, a dark, rat-infested series of tunnels, caverns, and time-bubbles, filled with sewage, mud, gore, and bits of historical London that never quite went away. The ragged people who live there have somehow slipped through the cracks of London-above. As always, the strong prey on the weak. Some of them use magic to control their ravenous gangs. Some of them do evil for the sake of Evil. Readers who don't like fantasy because of the overworked magician/dragon theme should read "Neverwhere" anyway--just call it a work of magical reality. It certainly offers unusual perspectives of London. Somehow our 21st century London-above has become a city of blurred, boring citizens, leading safe, blank lives. London-below is peopled with real characters, both good and evil. Some of them die awful deaths. Some of them eat the heads off of live pigeons (an old carny trick, at least until the RSPCA got busy). At least one of them comes back from the dead. Gaiman's hero, Richard Mayhew is a sweet, over-grown boy, henpecked by his type-A fiancée in London-above. When he rescues a ragged waif who almost bleeds to death on his dinner jacket, he slips into London-below and ends up on a quest for a holy artifact that couldn't even exist in his wildest, above-London dreams. A pair of ghastly villains, the Burke and Hare of London-below pursue Richard and his brave companions as they work their way closer and closer to the Beast out of civilization's dark prehistory, and their confrontation with the ultimate Evil. "Neverwhere"s ending is just right, its chief villain is satisfyingly and totally evil, and its hero finally bumbles into the right decision on how to live the rest of his life. This fantasy in a sense is the sequel to Milton's "Paradise Lost" although the ending is Gaiman's alone.

I had some difficulty to get into the story but once I did, I enjoyed it. It's the first book from Neil Gaiman that I read

"Neverwhere" é o segundo livro de Neil G. que leio e continuo encantada com a narrativa deste autor. Adoro ler, e a forma como o autor funde realidade e fantasia é apaixonante e inusitada para mim. Os personagens são super interessantes e as duas Londres (de cima e de baixo) são dois universos completamente diferentes. A trama é relativamente simples, mas a forma como ela se desenvolve é surpreendente. Em alguns (muito) poucos momentos, a descrição muito detalhista de dois personagens em particular se torna um pouco cansativa mas nada que tire o brilho da história. Vale MUUUUUUUITO a pena ler.

Est-il nécessaire de dire encore à quel point Neil Gaiman est un génie de la littérature ? La construction de ce Londres crée une atmosphère absolument incroyable. Le tout en est même très déroutant, j'ai reconnu des endroits qui me sont familiers dans la capitale britannique, j'ai cherché des indices dans la ville pour découvrir des passages secrets et je me suis réellement prise au jeu de ce livre. La familiarité de la ville se mêle avec allégresse avec l'étrangeté de l'histoire et donne un rendu complètement déroutant, désorientant. L'atmosphère de ce livre est typiquement ce que j'aime chez Gaiman, une réalité cabossée, presque steampunk sans le bling un peu facile qui y est parfois associé. On a est plongé dans l'idée que je me fais d'une ambiance victorienne moderne. Bref, j'ai adoré ma lecture. J'ai lu la plupart des livres de Gaiman et celui-ci reste mon préféré de tous.

Een hele leuke en spannende mix van fantasy, horror en een thriller . Thema's: coming of age, verraad, vriendschap. Een aanrader!

It doesn't matter if you like Gaiman or not, this is a good read. It delves into the idea of where people slip through the cracks go in their spiritual adventures and what they they see and do that those who live in the mundane world miss in the rush of being, 'normal'. It tackles a lot of complex subjects, the concepts of fallen angels, why Atlantis sunk and its reality, the elasticity of time and space and how the things that disgust us are a way for us to hide from the reality that surrounds us. Moderate Spoiler Alerts It's a profound book, a sadly surreal book and one that I could read several times for the layers of meaning contained in it. Like most books with layers of meaning, it was rushed onto a screen and stripped of its complexity. Fortunately, I didn't watch it, but the author was subjected to the desecration of his work, something that I can relate to and feel for him on the subject. I also did not read the abridged or altered texts. This edition has several extras, including a brief, alternative prologue and a lost short story about the Marquis (who you will know very soon if you read the book). This is a book that stays with you and makes you ask the questions that Richard Mayhew is left with, is this all there is? Are mystical experiences nothing more than head trauma or psychotic breaks? Or is there something else out there? Something that makes relationships deeper and more real than the day to day co-worker, surface relationships, perhaps even the ones we have with our families and friends where we delve below the surface and if we did, they would call us crazy. We carefully cultivate what is, 'normal' and avert our eyes from anything that may disrupt that normal. Part out of fear of being taken out of our element of understanding, but mostly out of our own fear of falling between the cracks ourselves. As though helping someone less fortunate than ourselves is a contagion, something that those who see and engage with those who are hurt or are in pain are susceptible to. Those who don't or won't see have an immunity to falling through the cracks, their self interest keeps them safe. That's a sad other sort of not being seen and when you read this book, and if you let yourself really see and think about what is being said, about time bubbles, doors everywhere and a world folded in layers just beneath our feet... it leaves you wondering how much of it is real. Not in a 'fantastical' sort of a way, but in a way connected to physics and quantum theory. Read the book and if you lack the attention span to get through it, my sympathy to you, because you are already a 'Jessica' and you will never see past the end of your phone and get out of your ruts and you'll never see even a peep into any of the below worlds. If you want to be a reader and you want to be a writer, you need to be able to open your mind and see into those places, be a hero, a hunter, an opener of doors, be someone other than a drone or a social climber and find the magic all around us in the world.