Between my interminable student book reviews and contemporary compulsive curation, I shamefully read some books without documenting my thoughts in any way. Time for some re-reads to fill in the gaps.
Here are Neil Gaiman's solo novels. Some new, some read before, a decade ago or more. Ranked, for the hell of it.
7. Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
**
Even if I hadn't been 23 when it was published and 33 when I got around to reading it, I don't imagine I would have been much more enthralled with this morbildungsroman as a boy. I'm all for gothic atmosphere, it's just too slow. The illustrations were boring too, but I haven't seen the originals, only the special version made for pathetic adults who are ashamed of the things they like.
1999 / Audiobook/ebook / 256 pages / UK
***
I gave up on this on my first attempt, and as a full-length work in the style of my least favourite bits of Sandman, it had its work cut out to win me over. It almost got there in the end, but beneath the self-aware irony it's just an overlong fairy tale with ten stock ideas for every fresh one.
2001 (updated 2011) / Audiobook / 635 pages / UK
***
Coming to gateway Gaiman after his less grounded works, I wasn't so taken with his postmodern Americanized deities. I appreciate the theological psychogeography, and he's still all about the puns, but one foot's planted too firmly in reality to ascend to his former heights and it drags. Gaiman's Fisher King.
4. Neil Gaiman, Coraline
***
It might have been a childhood favourite alongside the similarly eerie The Witches if I'd been born a decade later or found a time portal. Some of the imagery is delightfully twisted in the way the best kids' fiction is, balanced by empowering life lessons and silly comic relief where the book loses its universal appeal and becomes something older readers can appreciate on young readers' behalf instead.
3. Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
****
I don't know why Neil went off novels for a while, but this insubstantial splash helped to keep things afloat until the Neverwhere sequel hopefully rides in on a new wave. Coraline for grown-ups, Neil evokes the childhood experience so nostalgically that I misremembered the book being a lot sweeter and less ghoulish than it really is. The dark-fantasy elements are all a bit rote by now and not as noteworthy as that backdrop.
2. Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere: Author's Preferred Text
1996 (updated 2005) / Audiobook / 460 pages / UK
*****
I didn't know what to make of this socially-conscious urban-fantasy horror-comedy when I watched the TV version as a 11-year-old. I had to step through the threshold of adult responsibilities and tedium before I could appreciate Gaiman's fairy tale for dejected grown-ups, though I enjoyed the relentless literal-minded puns even before I saw a Tube map in real life.
It wasn't any kind of surprise to confirm that – like Hitchhiker's and possibly Red Dwarf – the book was the definitive version, but the unshakeable mental images of the cast proved to be a bonus rather than a hindrance. Fortunately though, my imagination wasn't similarly constrained by a BBC budget elsewhere.
It wasn't any kind of surprise to confirm that – like Hitchhiker's and possibly Red Dwarf – the book was the definitive version, but the unshakeable mental images of the cast proved to be a bonus rather than a hindrance. Fortunately though, my imagination wasn't similarly constrained by a BBC budget elsewhere.
2005 / Audiobook / 352 pages / UK
*****
I didn't realise this was an American Gods spin-off the first time around. Smaller in scope and a lot less serious, it's a much funner read that feels more in tune with Neverwhere or even Good Omens. Probably his easiest to overlook and probably my favourite.
