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Book Review - American Gods
Mar. 11th, 2002 02:01 pmIt is a significant and rare experience to me when finishing a book leaves me momentarily dizzy. Sometimes a book coerces my mind into thinking differently, into switching mental gears; and when I'm done I'm left in the real world still thinking like the book, awkward and befuddled.
And obviously, since I'm mentioning it, this is one of those books.
This isn't the first time the Neil Gaiman has done it to me. When I finished The Kindly Ones I had to go out for an hour-long walk despite the fact that it was raining and cold. I went into this book with NG already being one of those special authors who I will always keep in my heart... which is why I was surprised by the book as much as I was.
Most of the authors I like would stick out in a crowd. If you put Ray Bradbury or Harlan Ellison in a room with fifty people, you'd still be able find them in under a minute. NG would be in a corner with one or two close friends, watching and chatting, invisible except for the thirty people trying to track him down. His narrative voice is quiet, observant, and humble; he takes long pauses to look at little things, and tells a lot of different stories to make his points.
American Gods ties it all up neatly, which is something I thought impossible a third of the way through the book. Nothing that happens is unnecessary, none of the characters is underdeveloped, and at the end you're left to yourself thinking about how there really wasn't a good guy or a bad guy, and that the story really couldn't have fallen out any other way.
Rating: *** 1/2 (out of four)
Recommendation: It took a British adopted son to write the Great American Novel. This is not a book that will knock you flat as you read it; but it will nudge you in a hundred little ways until you've moved just as much. Not to be missed.
And obviously, since I'm mentioning it, this is one of those books.
This isn't the first time the Neil Gaiman has done it to me. When I finished The Kindly Ones I had to go out for an hour-long walk despite the fact that it was raining and cold. I went into this book with NG already being one of those special authors who I will always keep in my heart... which is why I was surprised by the book as much as I was.
Most of the authors I like would stick out in a crowd. If you put Ray Bradbury or Harlan Ellison in a room with fifty people, you'd still be able find them in under a minute. NG would be in a corner with one or two close friends, watching and chatting, invisible except for the thirty people trying to track him down. His narrative voice is quiet, observant, and humble; he takes long pauses to look at little things, and tells a lot of different stories to make his points.
American Gods ties it all up neatly, which is something I thought impossible a third of the way through the book. Nothing that happens is unnecessary, none of the characters is underdeveloped, and at the end you're left to yourself thinking about how there really wasn't a good guy or a bad guy, and that the story really couldn't have fallen out any other way.
Rating: *** 1/2 (out of four)
Recommendation: It took a British adopted son to write the Great American Novel. This is not a book that will knock you flat as you read it; but it will nudge you in a hundred little ways until you've moved just as much. Not to be missed.