posted on 12 Jul 2016

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Published in 2001 and quite early in his novel-writing career, American Gods, remains one of Gaiman’s  most ambitious books and certainly one of his longest. As you might expect from someone whose first love was the comic or graphic novel genre, his novels are extraordinarily visual and are prone to breath-taking liberties with plot, character and structure.

A review by David Burnett in The Guardian back in 2014 suggested that this might be the ideal beach read – something you could really disappear into and emerge blinking back to whatever ‘reality’ is. I will confess I started the book sceptically, expecting it to be over-dependent on the fantasy elements which can, over 500 pages,  become tedious in less skilled hands. I was pleased, however, to discover that, as with something like Lord of the Rings, if it’s done well it needn’t be a deal-breaker. The book is too long for my taste however, it could have lost 150 pages without doing too much damage and might have prevented the  sagging that occurs about two-thirds of the way through.

The premise of the book is pretty audacious. America is a land of immigrants – waves of immigrants in fact – and each new wave brought with them their own beliefs and gods to help inhabit and explain their new world. What if all those different gods continued to have an existence even if the population who originally worshipped them had now gone? What if they had tried to adapt to living a life undercover in modern America? And, what if the new gods of technology and rapacious finance were determined to wipe them out and rid the world of the last vestiges of their influence?

This is the world into which Gaiman plunges his hero, Shadow, a sensitive giant of a man just about to be released from prison. He dreams of a return to ‘normality’ with his wife Laura but instead finds his world literally in pieces – his wife killed in an automobile accident ( probably while in flagrante with his best friend ), with no job and no prospects. The offer of a job with the mysterious Mr Wednesday – a deal sealed with mead - triggers the start of an epic road trip and fantasy drama played out by the Classical, Norse, Egyptian and Indian gods but with the bemused and very human Shadow at its heart.

Nothing that happens here is reliable - fantasy, illusion and reality mix in unexpected ways. No-one is quite who they say they are – although plenty of clues are loaded into the text to warn you about this – and Shadow never quite gets an explanation for what’s happening to him until very near the end. The dead come to life – not in a zombie way – but as actors in the real world and Shadow not only has to deal with Laura stalking him from the grave but he himself has a whole series of actual or near-death experiences.

It would be criminal of me to reveal too much of the story here because that would rob you of the pleasure of seeing it unfold over the 500 pages it takes to tell the tale. Be prepared for double cross and double cross of the double crossers as well as some extraordinary skilful storytelling in which nothing ever happens for no reason.

So, ultimately, what kind of book are we dealing with here? It resists easy categorisation into a specific genre and ends up being a rich mix of myth, fable, allegory and plain old fantasy adventure. There’s a good dollop of movie technique that informs the structure and all the tropes of the road movie and deep south Americana are here. The book is a sprawling thing, tumbling over itself but held together – just – by the skill of Gaiman and his refusal to let go of all the strands he’s created. This is quite a ride which, I suspect, you will either love or one you’ll want to bale out of quite quickly. If you do stay on board until the end, you are at least rewarded with a resolution of sorts and some answers to the mysteries.

The first edition hardback of American Gods is now quite collectible and not cheap on the second hand market but beware, it’s a seriously heavy lump of paper and so the paperback might be a more obvious choice for the beach – if that’s where you’re heading.

Terry Potter

July 2016