Neverwhere

by Neil Gaiman

It has been years since I read Mr. Gaiman’s Neverwhere, but it’s always one that I come back to as holding some unidentifiable meaning.  I came to this work at an interesting time in my life, when I was deep into the corporate world.  I guess I still am, but that experience enabled me to identify with Richard Mayhew–a pawn in a corporate machine and to the life prescribed for so many of us today.  We have hopes and fears that we don’t want to or are afraid to admit, much like Richard Mayhew.

…somewhere not far inside him was the fear—the stark, utter, silently screaming terror—that if he got too close to the edge, then something would take over and he would find himself walking to the edge of a clifftop and stepping off into space.

When I read this for the first time, I’d passed the point of being engaged, and I had three wonderful children.  I started looking at this book to include an a listing of my favorite worlds.  Soon, it will reappear in a posting dedicated to world-building, but as I picked it up, I understand that the themes in this book deserve a posting all their own.

“Young man,” he [the marquis de Carabas] said, “understand this: there are two Londons. There’s London Above—that’s where you lived—and then there’s London Below—the Underside—inhabited by the people who fell through the cracks in the world. Now you’re one of them. Good night.”

Escaping to one of the many wonderful worlds that Mr. Gaiman builds, I found Neverwhere… London Below… or the Underside.  This quote, particularly the part about falling through the cracks is something of interest.

Where have people who “fell through the cracks” really gone?  

Wouldn’t it be fun and exciting if it was onto some adventure like Richard Mayhew–despite the dangers, the experience would definitely be one worth telling.

If I think about that in today’s society, one of the most relevant as well as saddest examples that springs to my mind in 2018 is the prevalence of feeling so lost in a world that just moves past you.  That feeling, or “falling through the cracks,” happens in so many ways.  The young person who cannot be who he or she was born to be from a gender perspective.  Crippling disabilities that exist only in a person’s mind–though they do exist– Depression, ADHD, Asperger’s, others I probably cannot fathom.  In my family life, I’ve dealt with some of this and battled the institutions that tell us what normal is in our society.  It’s hard to be different, especially when your body and mind are undergoing the trauma of changes that encompass adolescence.  It raises the question of how to include these lost souls back into today’s world.  What will, or should, or can I do today to keep someone from “falling through the cracks?”

Another poignant draw to this story is Richard’s compassion despite his uncertainty.  In the beginning, he’s lost in the corporate machine with a fiancé who wants and needs everything to be just so.  He doesn’t fit the mold.  It’s clear that he’s destined for something else.  And it’s truly his compassion that drives him to help Lady Door when he and his fiancé, Jessica, stumble upon her.  Jessica wants him to call an ambulance and leave the bloodied girl in the street.  What does the main character do instead?  He walks away from the woman he was planning to marry with the slight, injured girl in his arms.  Brave move, Richard.

In messages that always seem universal to the human spirit, Mr. Gaiman captures a cast of characters that simply explode from the page and drive the reader deeper into the mirror world underneath London.

…he [Richard] found watching this woman in action exhilarating, as if she were finding a part of him he had not known existed. It seemed utterly right, in this unreal mirror of the London he had known, that she should be here and that she should be fighting so dangerously and so well.

Beyond Richard, Lady Door, and the marquis, we meet characters that draw on so many other literary characters, but are all unique in and of themselves… From Hunter to Old Bailey, Mr.’s Croup and Vandemar, Lamia, and more.

Bottom line(s)… Forgive me, I can’t choose just one.  Rich characters, rich world building, humanistic stories.  Must read… and read again!

 

P.S. Surprisingly enough, I hadn’t known when I read this novel that it was actually a series for television before it was adapted into a novel.  I still haven’t watched the show, but maybe it’s something that’s binge-able on my horizons.

 

Happy reading!