Review: Neverwhere

Neverwhere
Written by Neil Gaiman
Published on January 1, 1996
400 pages
Fantasy
Purchased from Amazon for book club

Richard Mayhew is an unassuming young businessman living in London, with a dull job and a pretty but demanding fiancee. Then one night he stumbles across a girl bleeding on the sidewalk. He stops to help her–and the life he knows vanishes like smoke.

Several hours later, the girl is gone too. And by the following morning Richard Mayhew has been erased from his world. His bank cards no longer work, taxi drivers won’t stop for him, his landlord rents his apartment out to strangers. He has become invisible, and inexplicably consigned to a London of shadows and darkness a city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, that exists entirely in a subterranean labyrinth of sewer canals and abandoned subway stations. He has fallen through the cracks of reality and has landed somewhere different, somewhere that is Neverwhere.

For this is the home of Door, the mysterious girl whom Richard rescued in the London Above. A personage of great power and nobility in this murky, candlelit realm, she is on a mission to discover the cause of her family’s slaughter, and in doing so preserve this strange underworld kingdom from the malevolence that means to destroy it. And with nowhere else to turn, Richard Mayhew must now join the Lady Door’s entourage in their determined–and possibly fatal–quest.

For the dread journey ever-downward–through bizarre anachronisms and dangerous incongruities, and into dusty corners of stalled time–is Richard’s final hope, his last road back to a “real” world that is growing disturbingly less real by the minute.

Neverwhere is an incredibly intriguing novel written by Neil Gaiman. I have never read anything by Mr. Gaiman and I’m so glad that I started with Neverwhere. His world of London Below is so creative. You can definitely get lost in his dark underworld.

At the center of Neverwhere is Richard Mayhew. He starts out as a typical human in London Above. He has a job, fiancé (who is incredibly plastic) and a flat. All incredibly ordinary and boring. And then he meets Door and his life changes. During his adventures Below, all he wants is to get back to his “normal life”. He sees things that he never thought never existed. He’s frightened beyond all belief. However, he changes. He finds London Below full of life while London Above is devoid of all life. He finds a place Below where he can really live.

I loved Mr. Gaiman’s world of London Below. Everything seemed to center about the Underground. All the different stations and different groups of people are amazing to behold. Everything is so alien but at the same time familiar.

There are so many interesting characters in this book. I loved Door. I loved that she could open anything. She is a very brave character who brings life to Richard and to London Below. The creepiness of Croup and Vandemar reminded me of James Bond villains (Have you ever seen Diamonds are Forever?) All of the different characters really shaped London Below. From Hunter to the Marquis and the Earl to Old Bailey, everyone had their place and fiefdom.

I really enjoyed Neverwhere and I can’t wait to read my next Neil Gaiman book

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