Lisa of Troy's Reviews > Neverwhere

Overwhelmingly Delightful, Witty, and Funny

Richard is leading an average life, walking to an important dinner with his fiancée Jessica, when he finds a bleeding young woman on the sidewalk. He scoops her up and tends to her, much to the chagrin of Jessica. The young woman is named Door, and she changes Richard’s life forever. He is transformed into two worlds: London Above (his normal world) and London Below.

I haven’t been this excited about a book since His Dark Materials. This is one where I kept saying, “Oh, I’ll just read one more paragraph.” Then, I couldn’t put it down for another hour.

The best fantasy has good storytelling, and it also rumbles something in your soul. Neverwhere was fast paced and spellbinding. When Richard meets Door, his world is transformed. He sees things that he never saw before. He went to places that he wouldn’t otherwise go. His mundane, routine, ordinary, boring life gets turned on its head. Have you ever met someone who transformed your life? Years ago, I met a photographer, and we would be travelling in the car on a road that I had travelled every day. The objects whizzed by in a blur. He would then suddenly pull the car over to the shoulder and jump out, camera in hand, and produce the most stunning photographs. It was interesting just to travel with him, to see how he viewed the world, to reveal the beauty hidden in plain sight. However, that isn’t exactly the world that Gaiman is painting. Richard isn’t Jasmine in Aladdin going on a magic carpet ride while “A Whole New World” plays softly in the background. The world that Richard discovers isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. To fully see, Richard had to see the grime and ugliness. Does he prefer only seeing one world or is it worth the imperfection and unpleasantness to really see?

Another thing that I loved was when Door said that her friends don’t have phones. Then, she gives a list of complicated instructions to Richard that included spinning around three times anticlockwise. This was one of my favorite parts of the novel. These days, people don’t want to put in any work. The expectation is that everything should be effortless. Anger flares if you don’t answer someone’s text in 3.5 seconds. And as Thomas Paine says, “What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly.”

2025 Reading Schedule
Jan A Town Like Alice
Feb Birdsong
Mar Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
Apr War and Peace
May The Woman in White
Jun Atonement
Jul The Shadow of the Wind
Aug Jude the Obscure
Sep Ulysses
Oct Vanity Fair
Nov A Fine Balance
Dec Germinal

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