Book Review: American Gods by Neil Gaiman

This is a book that hardly needs a review from an obscure blog like mine. Its reputation preceded it, and that is why I picked it up in the first place. But it was just too good not to throw in my two cents.

I got started reading Neil Gaiman after I saw the movie Stardust. I was blown away with the whimsy and adventurous romance of the film, and if I loved that, the book was even better. This coincided nicely with the release of The Graveyard Book, and by the time I had finished that, I was firmly in the Neil Gaiman fan camp. So I searched out other people like me and the first thing they all said was, “Read American Gods.” I didn’t listen to them. I read Neverwhere instead, and I am actually quite glad I did, because I feel that all the novels I read leading up to American Gods were preparing me for what I was about to experience.

I don’t think that I can say that American Gods is any better than any of the other novels. In fact, I rarely hear fans of Neil Gaiman saying that any of his works are better than any of the others. People simply have their favorites (which they love) and their non-favorites (which they adore). For me, American Gods was simply a more heightened experience than any I had had with Gaiman’s work so far. It was intense, complex, and significant, though I couldn’t at first quite pinpoint why exactly it felt so profound to me. All I can say is that I felt like I was learning something, but I couldn’t quite say what. And therein lies the brilliance of Gaiman’s writing style. There is always that pervading sense that he has a message to communicate, but does it with so much subtlety that readers are left up to their own devices to decide what that message is and how it is going to affect them.

To me, the “message” in American Gods, had to do with the degeneration of American culture. But as this is something that I read into a lot of things, that may or may not have been Gaiman’s intention, and ultimately, authorial intention is moot when it comes to this novel because all profound themes aside, it’s just a damn good read. There aren’t many books that manage to be utterly creepy, heartwarming, adventurous, fantastic, futuristic, and historic all at the same time. I am given to believe that only Neil Gaiman could manage it. The protagonist , Shadow,  is so completely offbeat that he extends beyond the paradigm of “heroes who never wanted to be heroes” into the “heroes that even readers might not care about at first”.  But he is desperately sympathetic and not at all predictable.  Indeed, many of the characters are at once unlikeable but supremely sympathetic. It take real finesse to write characters like that, and it makes the novel dark, gripping, and undeniably titillating.

I probably won’t pick it up and read it every six months like I do with some books. But that is only because the images and impact of this novel are so indelibly branded on my brain that I won’t need to.