4.5

I’ve been reading it for very long. Too long, even. And it seems justified now that it took me so long to start in the first place, having read almost everything by Neil Gaiman except his probably most famous work. I just couldn’t get in step with the book. Partly it was because I’ve really had little time for reading recently, only before bed with computer-dried eyes, and an audio version would have been a great help if read by the author. Without prejudice to George Guidall’s job, I’m accustomed to Neil’s performance of his own works, and his voice is something I miss at times and keep in my player along with my favourite music – such tracks as October Tale (from The Calendar of Tales), and The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury, and Crazy Hair, and Cinnamon. I don’t know why American Gods was not recorded by Neil himself, but I say there’s a gap in the world where it should be. In my mind it was kind of filled up by imagining Gaiman’s intonations, which I know pretty well for doing the trick, and it occurred to me that in any other voice some bits of the book would have been embarrassing… Anyway, I finally got through, and did I learn anything from all this?.. Just as Shadow said, I think I met some people, and it all happened to me, but the details just slipped out of my head.
I don’t think I can find a better word to describe the book than did Neil himself. It is a strange book, uneven and ill-structured, unpredictable not in a way a good thriller is unpredictable, but in a way the life is so. American Gods began with nothing but a beginning, and the author said somewhere that this is not the best way to begin a book. It’s far more practical to know the ending when you begin to write, so that you have a kind of aim. But this isn’t what usually happens with our real lives, is it? And this sense of floundering that kept on throughout the book surprisingly makes it real and living, as if you were the first person ever to be told this story. You see, with some novels you know in advance what they are going to deliver, because they are solid and planned and explained by previous generations of readers, who you should sort of be up to. With American Gods, no review could give me any idea what to expect. (I guess mine won't be of use to anyone as well.) I only had a vague apprehension that this is not going to be the Gaiman that I especially like, not so delicate and graceful and kind as he is getting in his late works. What I ask myself now is, if American Gods had been my first book by Gaiman (not The Graveyard Book as it actually was), would I have fallen in love once and for all as I did? I don’t know really. I offered reading along to a new online acquaintance totally unfamiliar with Neil Gaiman, and he was appalled by obscene language and “desecration of the dead”. Then I asked the opinion of an understanding colleague, to whom I had mentioned Gaiman as one of my favourite authors. She said, “I suspect this is non-canonical of Gaiman, or just one rowdy aspect of his rather versatile personality. On the other hand, yesterday I was busy choosing items for bookcrossing, and I took American Gods, held it in my hands, and thought a bit and put it back on the shelf”. I believe this is exactly what I would have done.
The thing is that because I knew where to look I could recognize in American Gods many traits I love Gaiman for, his particular motives and types of characters, and especially his most careful choice of words (I wish I wrote out more quotes, but the famous “prosector and prosecutor and persecutor” is illustrative enough) and his skill in telling short stories. I’d rate it at least half a star lower if not for the handful of little plots, inserted in the main narrative. If you ask me, maybe this is the problem: surely Gaiman can write a 600-page novel, but it doesn’t look like his cup of tea. American Gods, frankly, lacks action and interaction of characters, and also it lacks humour. You don’t generally go to Neil Gaiman if you need some humour, but it was a bit too somber for a long book like this.
After all, it is done in time. I’m tired, but the last part was worth it. Winter is over, and the sky today was clear and bright.

P.S. A nice plot map by Rebecca Anne Moss.