Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere

It took me a long time to read Neverwhere.

I knew Neil’s name from The Sandman. Anyone who read comics in the nineties knew Sandman. I had bought a signed copy of American Gods in hardback when it was released. (It took me even longer to read that, but that’s a different story.)

I read the introduction which I liked. Lots of Neil’s books have a good introduction. Then I read the first chapter. Good so far. Then I lost track of what was going on. Croup and Vandermar and the Canary, Door running and then we are back with Richard. I put a bookmark in around the point that Richard and Jessica are walking along the street and four years later started reading it again.

And four years later it worked. The book spent the entire time on the bedside table, endured regular dusting, always there. It was usually at the bottom of the being read pile. I often have a few books on the go at the same time and things get started and stopped and restarted again. When I picked it up that second time I didn’t stop, finishing it in a couple of days.

I knew straight away what lots of readers now know. I had found somewhere I was going to go back to again and again. I have. I re-read it at least once a year. Neil himself reads the audiobook, and I can listen to it all day at work. I like the McAvoy/Cumberbatch radio drama. The comic book adaptation made some changes I wasn't too excited about.

It’s the line ‘sometime there is nothing you can do’ that hooked me. When you read that line the second time everything falls into place and you know Richard knows at last where he is supposed to be. On first reading I found Richard too passive. I wonder if that was what stopped me picking it back up. His life happens to him until he chooses to help Door, and the choice removes all his control, until he has the choice, makes a bad one, then learns. He is an everyman who discovers what ‘the rest of his life’ is going to be and has a choice. Seeing London Below through his eyes, which become our eyes, makes it real. And he is polite to a rat.

I have lived just outside London my whole life, so the re-purposing of place names in London Below is a particular pleasure. I cannot help passing Shepherds Bush without thinking about the book.

There may be another story, set in the same world. Neil says he doesn’t write sequels, but I would like to know about New York or Paris or Tokyo below. At Festival Hall last year he mentioned a new book set in the same world. I can wait.