1921 in Gilda Carr’s Manhattan involves a thirteen mile fence that runs down Broadway. East of the fence, things continue basically as they were. West of the fence is an overgrown wasteland that is at odds with and disallows modern technology. Thousands of people have disappeared in the Westside, and now the people who remain are thieves, bootleggers, murderers, artists, writers, drunks and the people who are too poor to leave. Gilda lives on the Westside.
In W.M. Akers’ Westside, Gilda is a detective, who solves ‘tiny mysteries’ as she calls them. What starts out as a usual tiny mystery for the wealthy Mrs. Copeland tracking down a white leather glove becomes the mystery of why Mr. Copeland is on the wrong side of town, murdered on a Westside pier. Which she wants no part of. That’s way too big for her. Her father, murdered years ago, was a cop, then a private eye, who solved big crimes. And who was eventually killed for what he stumbled upon. Gilda is not a solver of big crimes, she is a solver of small mysteries. The tiny questions that nag us to death and keep us up at night, not murders.
Still, she finds herself tracking down the details of Mr. Copeland’s death in the swampy Westside world of corruption, bootlegging, smuggling. Now Gilda finds herself on the verge of solving his murder and saving the city, even if she doesn’t want to be the person who does any of that.
I liked Westside. It had a very Neil Gaiman Neverwhere feel setting wise, and I very much enjoyed the whiskey, jazz, and the wild west feel of a wild New York City. Gilda herself is a compelling protagonist who distracts herself from her grief with the small mysteries she solves to make a living. The mystery is interesting but the pace was a little off in some places. I have already read the second Westside novel and have the third to dig into as well. I’m looking forward to it.
Tag Archives: authors: neil gaiman
Westside: A Gilda Carr Tiny Mystery
Neverwhere
Neverwhere was the other of Neil Gaiman’s books I revisited in 2018. It remains my favorite Gaiman book, and unlike American Gods, I remembered most of it.
What’s interesting about Neverwhere and American Gods is that I revisited American Gods because they did a TV adaptation I watched. Gaiman wrote Neverwhere as a companion novel to the TV series on BBC that he co-wrote. I haven’t seen the TV version of Neverwhere, but supposedly it is almost exactly the same. I am determined to find it and watch it eventually.
In Neverwhere, a Scottish man living in London one night stumbles upon an injured girl named Door and chooses to help her in spite of the fact that his fiance wanted to leave her there to possibly die. After this encounter, Richard finds himself quickly fading from his own life. His job is no longer his, his workmates no longer remember him, and his own fiance no longer knows who he is (although, considering how she wanted to leave a girl to die in the street, you dodged a bullet there, Richard).
Richard becomes visible only to the inhabitants of “London Below,” a magical, parallel realm that is beneath the sewers underground and invisible to inhabitants of “London Above.” It’s a parallel realm but with some interesting differences. For example, in London Below, landmarks from London Above take on different meanings. For example, the Angel, Islington is an actual angel.
Richard adventures through London Below with Door, the Marquis de Carabas, Hunter, and various others. Door is on a quest for Islington, who wants a key kept by the Black Friars and promises to help discover who murdered her entire family in exchange for the key. They are, of course, being chased by two brutal and not quite human assassins, Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar.
I enjoyed Neverwhere a lot. The world building is fun, and of all Gaiman’s books, I find this one to have the most interesting cast of characters and the most interesting story. Many of Gaiman’s works have elements of mythology. This is no different, and it features quite prominently throughout the book. The conclusion of the books is also quite satisfying, which is the icing on the cake. Nothing is better than a great ending to a book you really enjoyed.
American Gods
Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is a book I first read at the recommendation of a friend in 2007. I revisited it because the TV adaptation started airing in 2017.
Let’s just say they are two very different things, although since I think of them that way, I have no preference for one over the other.
I enjoyed revisiting the book. One of the arguments against Gaiman that I’ve seen is basically that he tells different variations of the same story over and over – basically a (white) guy becomes the hero in a secret world not visible to most of the rest of the population.
This story doesn’t bother me, and I tend to like the way Gaiman tells it.
Shadow Moon was THISCLOSE to getting out of prison and home to his wife when he’s released three days early. His wife and best friend die in a car accident. Later, Shadow finds out his wife was cheating on him with his best friend. I won’t retell the whole story here but basically this revelation sets Shadow adrift and pushes him into the employment of Mr. Wednesday as his “bodyguard.”
Ultimately, Shadow finds himself caught up in battle between the Old Gods – the gods we studied as part of our high school history and English classes – and the New Gods – the gods of money, media, and globalization.
I feel like I somehow missed a lot of the book when I read it in college, so it was sort of like discovering a new book all over again. I had completely forgotten large portions, and some of the portions were new, because the audiobook was the 10th anniversary edition with the author’s preferred text which included an additional 12,000 words and was performed by a full cast. It was very well done and I thoroughly enjoyed rediscovering it.
Criticism of Gaiman as a guy who tells different versions of the same story over and over is somewhat valid, but I find his insight into America uniquely interesting in this book. As someone who is now 10-12 years older than I was when I read it the first time, and has paid a lot more attention to the country I grew up in over those years, Gaiman’s take on the United States as a “bad place for Gods” is both the opposite of what people would think and also incredibly true.
Power belongs to the people/things men give it to. While you would think the United States of Jesusland was an excellent place for what we think of as the Christian God – it still is in many places – it’s bad in the sense that things constantly change here, with power constantly moving from one thing to the next as society and its opinions evolve. The “new gods” of money, media, globalization are hugely powerful now, but eventually their power will fade too. Maybe not entirely and maybe not in our lifetime, but they will, eventually, fade away as well. In a way, it’s already starting, between claims of “fake news” and a growing backlash against money in politics, and the instinct of many ordinary Americans to fight against sending jobs overseas.
As the United States continues to look for itself and continues to try to find itself, things will continue to change. As Gaiman points out, the United States is the only place in the world that doesn’t have a set definition of what it is, or necessarily even cares much.
“This is the only country in the world,” said Wednesday, into the stillness, “that worries about what it is.”
“What?”
“The rest of them know what they are. No one ever needs to go searching for the heart of Norway. Or looks for the soul of Mozambique. They know what they are.”
It’s an incredibly relevant take lately, particularly as we approach a presidential election in 2020.
American Gods remains firmly in its position of my second favorite Gaiman book. I’ve read quite a few. It was nice to revisit, and I’m sure I will revisit it again.
Norse Mythology
There are about a million books on Norse mythology out there. I read Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology as a more formal introduction because I love Neil Gaiman.
Sadly, I was not overly impressed with this book. It’s a very basic retelling of most of the stories I was already familiar with. It wasn’t terrible. I just…I don’t know, expected more?
I thought the book would go deeper into these myths and thought they’d be told more elaborately than they were. This may be my fault; world building in Gaiman’s novels is adequate but not necessarily over the top Tolkien style stuff, which actually kind of makes sense, since most of his novels are set on Earth, but like…a more magical version of Earth. It felt like Hemingway wrote the book – short sentences, not a lot of rich detail, etc…
So I’m not sure if this book was disappointing as much as not what I was expecting. I didn’t dislike it, but I didn’t feel much about it either way. I didn’t love it the way I loved Neverwhere or American Gods.
Thor is my favorite Marvel character, so I did enjoy reading more about his drinking and carousing and eating, but again, I did kind of already know he did that.
These Norse Gods come across as very human, with the same vices and virtues of those of us who aren’t divine. And the book can be very funny. One of my favorite exchanges in the book was this one:
“Loki, who plotted and planned as easily as other folk breathed in and out, smiled at Thor’s anger and innocence. ‘Your hammer has been stolen by Thrym, lord of all the ogres,’ he said. ‘I have persuaded him to return it to you, but he demands a price.’
“ ‘Fair enough,’ said Thor. ‘What’s the price?’
“ ‘Freya’s hand in marriage.’
“ ‘He just wants her hand?’ asked Thor hopefully. She had two hands, after all, and might be persuaded to give up one of them without too much of an argument. Tyr had, after all.”
It was very readable, and I enjoyed it. It’s quite a good intro to Norse mythology, but if you’re looking for something more in depth, you might prefer another book.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
I don’t know what it is about Neil Gaiman, but I like him. Even though all his stories are more or less the same basic premise – a man discovers something about the world that is extraordinary, and through this discovery, finds that he himself is extraordinary – I continue to like his stories.
I first read American Gods in college – my sophomore year, I think. My two best friends had read it, and they liked it, and I wanted to have something to talk about with them in terms of books. I was never quite up to their speed, reading-wise. They were much bigger into fantasy than I was, and they read a lot more than I did (and I read a lot by comparison of most kids I knew). Anyway, I liked American Gods. It’s currently being turned into a series by HBO.
Other Neil Gaiman stories were in my future. I went on to read Stardust, Neverwhere (my favorite by him), Anansi Boys and earlier this year, The Ocean at the End of the Lane.
The story follows the unnamed narrator as he visits his hometown for a funeral and the neighbors he had when he was a kid, and he remembers his childhood.
Basically, a specific death allows a supernatural being access to the normal world the narrator inhabits, and things go sideways from there. He meets Lettie Hempstock, who becomes his friend, and her family. The ocean at the end of the lane is Lettie’s ocean.
The usual fantasy stuff applies to this story (as it does in all Gaiman’s stories) – binding spirits, evil things, supernatural events, etc… although the basic premise of the story is slightly different here. There isn’t that much that is extraordinary about the narrator, but Lettie and her family were extraordinary. And he did no magic, but Lettie and her family did.
What I really liked about this story is the disconnect between childhood and adulthood, as I think Gaiman put it (when I was reading about the book). The adult narrator frequently forgets the events of his childhood until he returns to the neighbors’ farm multiple times. When he leaves, he forgets. The events seem fantastic to him when he was a kid, the way most things seem fantastic when we’re kids. And the explanations for things that adults have are not the explanations children have.
The magic of childhood is captured well in this book – and the way that you somehow forget stuff you shouldn’t or at the time you don’t think you ever could, the way time just makes the details fuzzier and fuzzier, until those things are gone.
This book is Gaiman being Gaiman. Anyone looking for anything new or groundbreaking isn’t going to find it here. I enjoyed it anyway.
words in scarlet ink 