American Gods by Neil GaimanMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This could have been so bad. It could have been full of easy to grasp metaphors and clichés. It could have been sensationalist drivel without any depth.
But it wasn't. It was a ridiculously amazing experience.
No review can adequately carry all this book has to give, but Gaiman's intercultural pantheon is something to behold. Pulling from a wide variety of traditions (Egyptian, Nordic, African, Greek, Germanic, Haitian, and more...) somehow the "fantasy" aspects become all too believable. No need to suspend disbelief, because Gaiman crafts a world where fact versus fiction really isn't all that important. Where Lucy Ricardo can be a...prophet? A taxi driver a jinn. And an ex-con (sort of) can be one of the most likeable (and quixotic) protagonists to surface in literature of the last fifty years.
Gaiman's amazing and encyclopedic cultural knowledge flows through the book with references as disparate as Saint-Saëns and The Beatles to Hieronymous Bosch. Everything is at once theatrical and ordinary, and this is the true feat. Nothing is not darkness in this land, nothing is something into which Shadow (the protagonist) can walk "with a strange fierce joy." (484).
It is a shame that Joseph Campbell died well before this book was written because Gaiman has both challenged and bolstered the idea of the monomyth. He has captured the iterative nature of myth, illuminating how it operates in our modern lives, dancing in between religion and science. And despite the depth of the book, it is full of humor and semi-sardonic tropes: "I think," said Mr. Nancy, "that wherever two men are gathered together to sell a third man a twenty-dollar violin for ten thousand dollars, he will be there in spirit." (551)
This could be a good storybook. But it can also be much more than that. Take the time to dig in---look up the characters in world mythology. Relish the double takes. Go back, read again. You won't lose the flow because there isn't any. And that, for once, is a good thing.
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