For the discussion on Tuesday, January 21, 2014 at Doyle's Public House in Tacoma, The Banned Book Club affiliated with King's Books selected Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. I had heard of Gaiman recently as the author of the children's book Coraline that was made into an animated movie. He has also written the storylines for many comic books both for Marvel, DC, and other publishers. Neverwhere was originally a script for a miniseries by Gaiman. After the series was produced and broadcast by the BBC in the mid-1990's, Gaiman wrote a novel version first published in 1996 and as an e-book in 2008. It is an urban fantasy in which the main character, Richard Mayhew, enters the magical but dangerous world of London Below hidden beneath the "real" world of London Above.
The story is quite imaginative and fantastical. Initially it seemed too much like a comic book where each character had super powers and pitted good against evil. But the story got deeper, added some interesting twists, and the characters got more interesting as the story developed. It is a "quest story" as one of the discussion participants pointed out. The writing is fairly simple to understand, but I was amazed at how Gaiman was able to effectively develop so many characters and create such vivid images of them and the settings. His writing includes sentences such as "Richard had noticed that events were like cowards: they didn't occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out all at once." (p. 15) Another is "They weren't just people. They were People. Some of them were Personalities." (p. 127) There was also a bit of humor when a minor character reflected that he must be getting old and he would soon be twenty-three. Richard has to work on something called the Wandsworth Report. In the graphic novel Death: The High Cost of Living for which Gaiman wrote the story there's a goldfish named Wandsworth. I was disappointed at the use of American English words in Neverwhere such as "cellular phone," and "answering machine." I guess this is due to Gaiman having lived in the U.S. since the early 1990's. At least he mentions Richard getting Indian takeaway rather than takeout.
There were many relatable references. Richard walks by "the lights and noise of the Virgin Megastore." (p. 34) We used to shop at the Virgin Megastores in Southern California. The Marquis de Carabas wears "a huge dandyish black coat that was not quite a frock coat nor exactly a trenchcoat." (p. 35) This reminds me of the "hero coat" worn by the title character of the BBC TV program Sherlock. Speaking of Sherlock, I think the book mentions that Richard read the Holmes stories as a child. The evil characters, Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar set up their headquarters "in the cellar of a Victorian hospital closed down ten years earlier because of National Health Service budget cuts." (p. 89) Plan B mentions NHS healthcare in his song "Ill Manors." The book mentions the "Mind the Gap" signs that we remember in the London Underground stations. I don't remember the signs "warning travelers that there were 259 steps up to the top and only healthy people should even think of attempting it." (p. 89) The character Serpentine has a sister named Olympia.
Despite mostly taking place in the fictional and fantastical London Below, the book still contains many references to the real London Above. Richard's employer is located "on the third floor of a big, old, drafty building just off the Strand." (p. 45) The character simply known as the earl of Earl's Court is the lord of most of the trains including "the Central, the Circle, the Jubilee, the Victorian, the Bakerloo …" (p. 111) The book mentions that St. Paul's Cathedral "had been built in white Portland stone." (p. 114) One scene takes place on the HMS Belfast, "a gunship of 11,000 tons, commissioned in 1939, which saw active service in the Second World War. Since then it has been moored on the south bank of the Thames, in postcardland between Tower Bridge and London Bridge, opposite the Tower of London." (p. 185) I remember seeing the ship during a boat tour of the Thames. Other parts of London mentioned in the book include Knightsbridge, Blackfriars, Islington, Shepherd's Bush, and Hammersmith.
We had a great discussion of Neverwhere at Doyle's Public House on Tuesday, January 21. There were six of us including one new participant. I ordered the jerk chicken wings appetizer. Neverwhere was challenged by a mother of a high school student in Alamogordo, New Mexico in 2013 because of one scene she considered R-rated due to sexual references and profanity. She had never actually spoken to the teachers and the challenge was rejected. Most of us liked the book, though one did not like the fantasy elements and the communication with rats. Another compared this to the mice rulers in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. As far as favorite characters, many liked the Marquis and others liked Hunter. I kind of liked Anaesthasia. We talked about real-life "underworlds," the idea of feeling trapped in a dull life as Richard felt, and why Richard made certain choices. Someone mentioned the Seattle Underworld tour that differs from the more well-known Seattle Underground tour. They also mentioned the Yuppie Nuremberg Defense: "I just need to pay my mortgage." It comes from the movie Thank You for Smoking" and plays off the defense "I was just following orders."
Other books mentioned included American Gods also by Neil Gaiman, The Supernaturalist by Eoin Coffer, and The Bookseller of Kabul by Arne Seierstad. For the next meeting we planned to read Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler. For the next next meeting in March we were given a choice between Tweak by Nic Sheff and Hold Still by Nina La Cour. We decided to choose a different book altogether: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
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