The Ravenous Bibliophage - Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere
In October of 2004, I was enjoying the second month of a semester abroad in Merry Old England. East London, to be exact. And by that time, the girl in the flat above me ('flat' is British for 'apartment,' or in this case, 'dorm,') had become by very best friend. Shortly after Hallowe'en, she put a book in my hand and told me I had to read it, I would love it. Now, I should tell you upfront that being introduced to a book this way -- having it thrust on me and being told I absolutely have to read it because it's wonderful and I'll love it -- is not the best way to get me to read it. I'm just obstinate that way. If someone forcefully suggests something to me, my knee-jerk reaction is to do the opposite, or to ignore the request entirely. But in this case, the book was a three-part anthology including Neil Gaimain's Stardust, Neverwhere, and the short story and poetry collection Smoke and Mirrors. Neil Gaiman has been my favorite dark fantasy author ever since.
I've read pretty much everything in Gaiman's collection by now, but Neverwhere is the one that hooked me. It takes place in contemporary London, except that it's divided into two fiefdoms: 'London Above,' the real-world London that we know, and that I came to love while living there; and 'London Below,' the fantastical netherworld that exists just under the surface. The basic idea is that all the vagrants, beggars and street musicians of the city - all the people you'd normally give only passing attention to, before forgetting about them completely - are people who have 'fallen through the cracks' of normal society, and thus become part of this underworld community where 'normal' becomes an idea of the past, and nothing is as it seems. The two Londons coexist fairly independently of one another, but they are linked, and anything that happens in one can affect the other.
Normally what I look for in a book before anything else are good characters. If I'm not emotionally invested in the people in the story, I'm not going to care what happens to them. The characters in Neverwhere are indeed compelling - the two hitmen, Croup and Vandemar, double as legitimately scary villains and a comic relief duo; the protagonist, Richard Mayhew, is a lost everyman who's struggling to come to terms with the surreality of London Below; and Door, a young girl with a unique power and an unassuming personality, is a refreshing change from the damsel-in-distress staple. However, what drew me to this story was not the characters, but the setting and atmosphere. Delving into a fantasy world set in London while I was living there was only half the fun. The other half was the way that this world was realized. If you've ever been on the London Underground (that's British for 'subway' or 'metro,' sometimes called simply 'the tube') then you've probably taken a double take at the odd names tacked onto the stops. Earl's Court? Blackfriars? Hammersmith? They might as well be names for acts in a trippy sideshow. And in this novel, that's not too far from the truth. Earl's Court is an empty train car that's home to the decrepit nobleman Earl, and his long-suffering band of loyal followers. Blackfriars is a monastery of very secretive and elite monks, always dressed in black robes instead of the usual brown. Hammersmith is a giant - here meaning not just big, but a Jack-and-the-Beanstalk type of giant - who works as a blacksmith at the traveling market held weekly by the residents of London Below.
Sometimes I wonder if Gaiman came up with this story purely as result of wondering what in the world was going on with those names. I'm sure he's not the first to wonder about that, and he probably won't be the last. There are real stories behind the ridiculous names on the London Underground, surely. But what Gaiman gave us is more frightening, more whimsical, and altogether more magical than anything we could learn from a history book.
