There are few people as creative and imaginative as Neil Gaiman. He’s often put into the fantasy genre, but to think that he has anything substantive in common with J.R.R. Tolkien or Brandon Sanderson would be incredibly misleading. He uses a lot of mythological tropes, and has little interest in conventional narrative storytelling. He kills off characters, subjects them to suffering and unredemptive challenges, and helps us love the ugliness in his worlds. No one is straightforwardly good or bad, a hero or a villain, even if there are certainly people we root for and those we’re happy to see get their comeuppance. The Sandman series is one of my favorites.
I recently listened to Neverwhere, one of his earlier books. At first I wasn’t sure what to think, as his books are definitely out of the box, even a bit odd. But over time, the story and characters totally swallowed me up and I just wanted to get back to the car to listen (this wasn’t really a problem, since I have a long commute nowadays!). At the core, it’s a coming of age story, but that only provides the frame for the book. It takes place in London Below, a kind of counter-version of London whose existence owes itself to the remnants, detritus, suffering and evil from the real London, or London Above. Richard Mayhew, the main character, finds himself there entirely by accident, and the book tracks his path back to London Above, and the many adventures he has along the way. It’s a kind of other-worldly version of the Odyssey, combined with a coming of age for Mayhew. The pleasure of the book for me was more about the characters he meets along the way than the journey itself (though that was quite a lot of fun).
I can’t recommend Gaiman enough. There are few writers like him.
Just Because I Liked It:
- This was a fascinating conversation with Vejas Luilevicious on the Lex Friedman podcast, an academic with an expertise in communism. It was about the history of communism, the people who most influenced it from Marx to Lenin to Mao, and its continued impact on our world.
- This was a powerful speech by the Prime Minister of Italy in defense of Western values. You can read the transcript or watch the video version at the bottom.