Finished some Neil Gaiman today with the novel “Neverwhere”. It always feels good to read another work by an author after a little while.
The synopsis of this story revolves around a young man named Richard Mayhew who has a good heart and an ordinary life, only for it to change forever after he stops to help a girl that he finds bleeding on a sidewalk in London.
This small act of kindness has propelled him into a world that he never knew even existed. A world filled with people who have fallen through the tracks, and he has become one of them.
And now Richard must learn to survive in this literal city of shadows and darkness inhabited by monsters, saints, murderers and angels in order to return to the London that he knew.
“Neverwhere” was a novelisation of a BBC television miniseries that Gaiman had also worked on. Never saw the series but now I have read the book. I really been enjoying the weird side of fantasy a lot lately which includes writers like Peake, King and Barker. And now, after reading a good number of his books, Gaiman. And now “Neverwhere” is another novel that will fir snugly within my collection, and of course I’m about to start on another one soon today!
by i-the-muso-1968
4 Comments
The audio play of it is pretty good. James McAvoy plays Richard and Natalie Dormer plays Lady Door
Neverwhere is awesome, and you’re underselling it a bit by leaving out that the main female character’s name is Door. I always loved that. I’m not a huge Gaiman fan (yet anyway) but I absolutely loved this book. Did not know it was a novelisation of a BBC series; I’ll have to look for that. Thanks
I loved this book as a kid when I read it. I don’t know if it still holds up for me anymore, but it was one of the first modern/urban fantasies I’d read, and it stuck with me for a while because of that.
One thing Gaiman does do very well is come up with weird worlds and characters, and Neverwhere shows that off very well, IMO.
The incompetent MC who stumbles into a fantasy world that absolutely wants to kill him is one of my favorite tropes & Gaiman exercises it perfectly