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Neil Gaiman
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Book
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Publisher | Headline | ||
ISBN | 978-075532280 | ||
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Reviewer
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Gareth
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Synopsis
Under the streets of London there's a world most people could never even dream of - a city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, and pale girls in black velvet. Richard Mayhew is a young businessman who is about to find out more than he bargained for about this other London. A single act of kindness catapults him out of his safe and predictable life and into a world that is at once eerily familiar and yet utterly bizarre. There's a girl named Door, an Angel called Islington, an Earl who holds Court on the carriage of a Tube train, a Beast in a labyrinth, and dangers and delights beyond imagining...And Richard, who only wants to go home, is to find a strange destiny waiting for him below the streets of his native city. This title includes extra material exclusive to Headline Review's edition.
Review
Neverwhere is a simple premise (in fact, all Neil Gaiman's stories have deceptively simply premises... ) there is a London below the London we all know. And in this London are "anthropomorphic personifications" of Whitechapel; Angel Islington; the Black Friars; Earls Court, etc. All the tube stations and London landmarks are real people and places, and it is into this world that Richard Mayhew unwittingly finds himself part of when he becomes the good Samaritan to a young girl called Door -who is trying to escape the very nasty duo called Croup and Vandemar (those wonderful names)- as she tries to find out why her family were killed.
Gaiman's books are magical -there's no other word for them. As I said in my review to American Gods, Gaiman bases his stories in the mundane, everyday normal (?) life and then weaves the most wonderful spell around them. All the characters have their own little idiosyncrasies that make them truly unforgettable.
I think it's very easy to become a fan of Gaiman's work. He's currently the new "hot" property in Hollywood. Coraline's currently no 2 in the cinema box office; and Gaiman also co-wrote the most recent "Beowulf". Neverwhere started life as a tv mini-series, which was co-produced by Lenny Henry- and both Neil Gaiman and Dave Mckean released the sublime "Mirrormask" a couple of years ago. To me Gaiman is one of the century's great writers -no one can match him on what he writes.
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