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 I
would never have read Neverwhere if it weren’t for the fact
that I had lost it under my bed.
It was one of those books that one of my dear friends had
lent to me years ago, when he found out I had read the book
Gaiman had penned with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens. Being
the rampant Vampire: The Masquerade dork I was at the time,
the said friend thought I’d like this book as it was a bit
darker, a bit more fantastic, and being polite, I took the
book as I hated to be rude and tell him, “sorry, but the
idea of a magical London beside a regular London has already
been done by JK Rowling, thanks.”
OK, granted, the concept wasn’t exactly original by anyone’s
standards, but Neverwhere came home with me, and then
promptly ended up appropriately lost in the depths of the
world under my bed, where I’m sure it cavorted with the
mutant herd of carnivorous dust bunnies and chatted with the
stray lost sock or two. When I finally retrieved the book,
(after an effort to deplete the carnivorous dust bunny
population), I didn’t even remember where I got it or what
it was about, and not having much better to do outside of
hunting for the lost socks, I decided to give it a read.
I had heard of Gaiman outside of Good Omens, mostly for his
Sandman series, which I had at that point only ever heard of
but not read. It was this book that hopelessly hooked me
into the imagination of Neil Gaiman and the worlds he
creates. Like much of Gaiman’s other work, Neverwhere is as
much an escapist fantasy as it is a slightly darker, morbid
and twisted look at our own dreams and fairy tales, all
thrown onto the backdrop of modern humanity. Richard Mayhew
is a fairly normal London businessman, who makes the mistake
one day of doing a good deed for a seemingly homeless girl
who he finds wounded on the street. Seeking to assist her
and protect her from the two strangely dangerous characters
that are following her, Richard takes in the girl who calls
herself Door, assisting her and helping her to get back on
her feet. But for Richard, no good deed goes unpunished, as
almost immediately after Door’s departure, Richard’s life is
turned upside down. He becomes invisible to the eyes of most
everyone he meets, even his own fiancée, and soon finds that
in his normal, safe world he is nobody, he doesn’t exist.
Trying to seek the answers as to what has become of him and
how to reverse it, Richard goes in search of Door, hoping to
find a way back to his old life. What he finds instead is a
whole world that Richard didn’t even realize existed, full
of color, adventure, mystery, and danger. That is the world
of London Below.
Besides the story of Richard’s own self-discovery, Gaiman
weaves in the plot of Door, a girl with an extraordinary
talent, whose entire family is horribly and cruelly murdered
by Messr. Croup and Vandemar, two Dickensian-like hired
murderers, who are seeking to capture Door for their client,
who remains unnamed through most of the story. As Richard
tries to find his way back to the world that he knows, he is
drawn into the intrigue of Door’s plight, of the mystery
surrounding the death of her family, why it is that the
nefarious and dangerous Croup and Vandemar are out to
capture her, and just who is her enemy and who is her friend
amongst their coterie, the enigmatic and powerful woman,
Hunter, or the roguish and self-serving Marquis de Carrebas.
Richard joins the expedition first as the overwhelmed and
wide-eyed neophyte, bumbling and stumbling into everything.
But as the mystery deepens, and Richard is taken through the
world of London Below and all of its wonders, he learns more
about himself, who he is, and what he is capable of. And
with each new adventure with Door and her group, he finds
himself becoming less and less the Richard of London Above,
and more and more someone else.
While the story is very much a traditional tale of adventure
and self-discovery, Gaiman takes these familiar themes of
learning and growth and weaves them into a new world that is
both as colorful and exotic as it is familiar in a twisted
sort of fashion. London Below is not a model or a copy of
London Above, rather it exists beside it, sometimes right
along side of it, in the subways, alleyways, and dark,
forgotten corners of London where modern people refuse to
look or don’t allow themselves to see. Many of the denizens
of London Below are those that people from London Above see
everyday but never notice, the homeless man on the corner,
playing a violin for coins, or the strange, cackling woman
down the way picking through the garbage. In this world,
those that we overlook or ignore have a whole life and
importance independent from the society of London Above.
Because of this, forgotten aspects of London’s long history
still live on in London Below. Creatures that normal,
rational Londoner’s above discredit as being fictional or
made up exist and are very, very real in London Below. Magic
there is not forgotten, nor are the old stories. In some
ways Gaiman has created an imaginary world in London Below
that is more vibrant, interesting, and real than the world
of London Above that is Richard’s home.
In much of Gaiman’s work there is a love of word play,
particularly for the names and places that populate his
native England. To an American, such as myself, I’ve always
been endlessly amused by some of the names and titles of
places in London, but Gaiman uses many as these place names
literally in his story, adding the sense of whimsy wonder in
the world, and causing poor Richard no end of confusion.
Where in Richard’s world, Black Friar’s refers to a place,
in the world of London Below, the Black Friars are a group
of very real monks, (and no, I don’t think they ever
clarified if them were the real Dominican Black Friars or
not). Knightsbridge goes from being a somewhat unobtrusive
sounding place, to a dangerous pathway where the very
nightmares of your sleeping world can snatch you away and
carry you into the night. Gaiman takes the prosaic in his
world, and turns it into the fantastical in the world of
London Below, making it both strangely familiar and
disturbingly unsettling.
True fans of Gaiman’s work know he has a predilection for
the dark, and London Below is no exception. Overlaying this
unique world, there is that sense of darkness, danger, and
deception. Croup and Vandemar, our two antagonists through
much of the story, are deliciously devilish fiends, a cross
somewhere between Victorian undertaker and 20th century
mercenary. They are twisted creatures, but with a certain
morbid charm in their own bizarre way. They are businessmen,
out to do what it takes to receive their payment, and they
don’t particularly mind if this work means that they must
kill a person or two…frankly that is the part they enjoy the
most. They skulk through the story, almost catlike, waiting
for their time to strike, and if it isn’t available for them
at this point, they will persevere with another, better
scheme on the next time.
Neverwhere was a radio show, and then a television series
before it ever came to book form. This certainly helps the
story flow. Rather than getting bogged down in the details
of creating the world of London Below, we as the reader are
thrown into the situation head first, and we figure it out
along the way, much as Richard does. This is effective in
drawing us into the tale, and really it does help keep it on
track. Yet there are so many wonderful aspects to the world
of London Below that you almost wish that Gaiman would spend
more time at one of the Floating Market stalls, or exploring
some other aspect of London Below.
This is the book that made me fall in love with Neil Gaiman
as a writer. Filled with a wonderfully twisted world, full
of intrigue, darkness, and a fair dollop of wonder,
Neverwhere is a great way to be introduced into the weirdly
wonderful world of Gaiman’s work. If you can get your hands
on it, I also highly recommend either the BBC radio or
television productions to add to the story as well
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