Vormancian's Full Review: Neil Gaiman - American Gods
The trouble with America is we haven’t any Gods. Oh sure, we’ve got God, but he’s hardly a replacement. Going along with the title of Neil Gaiman’s book, we don’t have ‘American Gods’. We’re too young, too busy, and everyone came here with their own Gods anyway. They didn’t need to create any American ones. Gaiman’s supernatural grift focuses on the cultural detriment caused, if not by the fact that we have no Gods, then at least by the same thing that causes us not to have Gods.
Those who find it difficult to work through characters who fall prey to horrible circumstances are advised to make their best efforts at getting through the first fifty pages. It’s well worth it, but for the faint of luck it can be a rough ride. Our main character is a man named Shadow, and despite the odds his name is meaningfully metaphoric. We meet him in prison, approaching the last days of his three year sentence, and he’s soon told by the warden that he’s going to be released a few days early. His wife and best friend, who was going to provide him with a job when he got out, have been killed in a car accident which was actually caused by the affair they were having.
Once out of prison, Shadow hardly has time to wonder what he’s now going to do with his life before he meets a man calling himself Wednesday. It’s not giving much away to tell you that Wednesday turns out to be Odin. He’s the ‘American Odin’ though, so America does have its Gods in some sense. It seems as though people believed in their own Gods enough when they came over that new American versions came into existence. Unfortunately, there is so little belief in them now that they barely manage to get by, often resorting to telling fortunes, or taking menial jobs. Of course, these are the ‘old’ Gods. There are ‘new’ gods hanging about America as well, but even they have trouble counting as American Gods, because they’re apparently somewhat accidental. There’s an Internet God, and a Media God, and an assortment of other Gods that people, more or less unwittingly, ‘pray’ to. Through Wednesday, Shadow finds himself in the middle of a war between the old Gods and the new.
Though Gaiman’s book has a definite and easy to identify plot arc, it’s filled with commentary and unnecessary (in terms of furthering events) tangents. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is going to depend on the reader. I think it’s wonderful, and Gaiman uses his tangents to solid effect. His side stories about the creation of Gods and/or their migration to America don’t do anything for the plot, but they do wonders for further defining where we’re going in a different sense. On the other hand, many readers might be frustrated going through ten or fifteen pages that are never going to connect to anything.
You’ll have guessed that it’s not exactly a page-turner. Gaiman has a slow and deliberate pace, but he weaves a tale that hooks you in a more important way than one that simply runs headlong from start to finish. Though there is a bit of a mystery going on here, Gaiman is as much a wordsmith as a storyteller, and American Gods is not interested in dragging you along to the surprise of the next plot step. It would rather delve into the intricacies of its characters, and the confusion and illogic of its surreal but accurate rendering of reality. It would rather let you ponder over why it uses checkers (the Tic-Tac-Toe of board games), when chess is the obvious choice, and why its hero would agree to let himself be smashed in the head with a sledgehammer, or roped to a tree and left to die.
Within the spinning of a very entertaining yarn, Gaiman provides an enlightening commentary on America itself, even if it is difficult to apply a strict ‘serious’ to it. Gaiman as always, looks around America from several perspectives at once. It’s easy to see he has the eye of a weekend historian, travel journalist, and stand-up comedian, and he mixes them all together with his own unique sense of wonder mixed with baffled curiosity. Seriously, you explain those roadside curiosity stops that litter the countryside.
It’s not exactly the next great American novel, but it’s witty, entertaining, and a marvelous adventure. Many among the plethora of quotes you’ll find on the cover go a bit overboard, but I’ll go along with Stephen King and say that we’re lucky to have Gaiman.
Released from prison, Shadow finds his world turned upside down. His wife has been killed; a mysterious stranger offers him a job. But Mr. Wednesday, ...More at Buy.com
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