Neverwhere
1996
- fiction
- underground areas
- underground homeless persons
- businessmen
- subways
- fantasy fiction
- fantasy
- london (england), fiction
- fiction, fantasy, contemporary
- fiction, horror
The story
"Richard Mayhew is an ordinary young man with an ordinary life and a good heart. His world is changed forever when he stops to help a girl he finds bleeding on a London sidewalk. This small kindness propels him into a dark world he never dreamed existed. He must learn to survive in London Below, in a world of perpetual shadows and darkness, filled with monsters and saints, murderers and angels. He must survive if he is ever to return to the London that he knew."
What it’s like
Dense, wry, and quietly eerie, Neil Gaiman's prose moves like a walk through a city you half-recognise: rain-slick London streets give way to tunnels thick with the smell of damp brick, tallow and river mud, and the sentences carry that grimy, lamplit atmosphere with an easy, conversational voice. Its vibe is cosy-uncanny, a fairy tale told by someone with a dry smile, with flashes of genuine menace that arrive suddenly and pass. The pacing is brisk and episodic, full of odd encounters, quests and near-misses, and the emotional register stays warm even as the world turns strange. Its central arc follows a decent, bewildered office worker slowly growing braver and more capable as he learns that kindness has a cost and a place below. Violence occurs in the form of brief, sometimes grisly fights and a few murders, with some dread and creepy imagery, but no sustained gore and no sexual content. It suits a rainy weekend, a long train journey, or anyone who loves urban fantasy with a sense of humour and a sense of wonder, especially readers who enjoy invisible cities hidden beneath the familiar.
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