Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman – Details
Book Title: Neverwhere
Book Author: Neil Gaiman
Series: London Below, The World of Neverwhere #1
Audio Narrator: Neil Gaiman
Date Published: September 16, 1996
Number Of Pages: 370
My Rating: ★★★★★
Jump to: Neverwhere Summary | Neverwhere Book Review | Neverwhere Audiobook Review
Discussion: Do you ever feel like darkness is a living entity?
Neverwhere – Summary
Richard Mayhew has a perfectly ordinary life in London until the night he innocently helps an injured girl. The next things he knows, Richard is thrust into the world of London Below trying to find his way home.
“Dear Diary, he began. On Friday I had a job, a fiancée, a home, and a life that made sense. (Well, as much as any life makes sense). Then I found an injured girl bleeding on the pavement, and I tried to be a Good Samaritan. Now I’ve got no fiancée, no home, no job, and I’m walking around a couple of hundred feet under the streets of London with the projected life expectancy of a suicidal fruitfly.” – Neverwhere
Neverwhere – Book Review
Neverwhere is one of all-time my favorite books, so I knew that it had to be the first book review on my website.
First of all, I’m a huge fan of Neil Gaiman. He has a real knack for telling stories that are strange yet believable. His characters always leave a lasting impression on me and it is always hard for me to put his books down. I don’t often re-read books, but I find myself going back into his worlds time and time again.
Neverwhere is no different. The absurdity of the world and its characters has me grinning like a child every time I open the book. I’m instantly transported back into a time and a place of wonder and adventure.
The main character, Richard Mayhew, grows a lot as a character throughout the book. He’s not really all that likable in the beginning because of how boring he is. But, by the end, you really don’t want to stop reading to see where his life takes him next.
Of course, some of the other characters in this story have become the types of characters that you love and would want to be friends with forever.
- Door, the young girl who needs help and who’s story the book is centered around, isn’t my favorite character, but oddly enough, I view her a little differently each time I read the book.
- Marquis de Carabas is my favorite. He’s mysterious and you can never quite tell what his angle is. I’ve noticed that there’s another book in the series that follows him and it’s on my to-read list.
- Mr. Croup & Mr. Vandemar are the villains of the story. Sometimes I laugh at their antics while other times I visibly cringe.
Neverwhere – Audiobook Review
I love when authors narrate their own books. They are able to put the inflections and tones into the stories the way the book intended. Neil Gaiman always does a wonderful job bringing his stories to life.
Discussion – Do you ever feel like darkness is a living entity?
I really like the following quote from the book.
“Richard began to understand darkness: darkness as something solid and real, so much more than a simple absence of light. He felt it touch his skin, questing, moving, exploring: gliding through his mind. It slipped into his lungs, behind his eyes, into his mouth…” – Neverwhere
I love this line because it really makes you feel as if the darkness is alive. Have you ever had that feeling? I know I have. In the house I grew up in as a child, there was a hallway that was pretty dark at night. Every time I walked down that hallway at night, I got a small tingling sensation in the small of my back and I just knew that there was something in the darkness watching me.
What do you think? Do you ever feel that way? Let me know in the comments below.
