American Gods was on my pile of books to read for a very long time, but when I went back to England for Christmas it was the one I was most keen to read, so it’s the one I picked for the plane trip back. I read the rest of it slowly, and overall very much enjoyed the striking imagery, strong characters and evocative settings of the book.
At the same time, though, I felt a certain disappointment similar to my feelings at the end of Murakami’s novels. A lot happened, and some of the plot strands were tied up so neatly as to almost be pat, but I still felt like my expectations weren’t fulfilled. I wanted more to happen. I think the problem was that the stakes never seemed genuinely very high.
Conceptually, American Gods is strong. It has a lot in common with Gaiman’s friend and collaborator Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods, only of course set not on a fantasy world but in a rather gritty modern America. In Discworld, it was belief that made a god strong while superficial worship was irrelevant, while that seems somewhat inverted in American Gods but the basic outline of an everyman figure assisting a god whose glory days are in the past while a large conflict approaches is clearly echoed. That said, the books are of course very different beasts and Gaiman is in full adult-writer mode, not shying away from the profane, darkly violent, sexual or indeed hypersexual. Not advised as a Coraline follow-up.
The novel revolves around Shadow, a big guy of indeterminate brown-skinned race who is a very engaging main character, being big and quiet but also inquisitive, loyal, intelligent and unfailingly self-sacrificing. The novel opens with him being released from prison, where he is serving time for a somewhat self-sacrificial crime, expecting life to be much better once he’s released. However, he finds that the life he wanted to return to has crumbled, but has a chance at a new job with a strange old man with the air of a con artist who introduces himself as ‘Wednesday.’
One of my problems with American Gods was that many parts of it were too obvious. I liked Wednesday’s name, as I know not everyone knows the origin of the English names for days, but another character introduced very early but properly revealed much later had a name that was far too blatant. Shadow’s own background was signposted far off, too, as was the overarching plot and the tacked-on murder mystery was so obvious as to feel to me like it shouldn’t have been included at all. Part of my feeling of being unsatisfied, I suppose, derived from this feeling of the big reveals not being at all surprising.
I loved the first third of the book. I enjoyed the bleak vision of modern America Gaiman drew up, of ex-cons and small-town rumours and at the same time, the mysteries of an underworld of gods living amongst us. I loved that the lore of America was tied up in its kitschy roadside attractions, and that traveling around the country was obviously an important part of this story. And I enjoyed both Shadow’s and Wednesday’s characters and their relationship.
But then things meandered. Far too long was spent with Shadow fitting into the community of a small, quiet northern town where everybody knows everybody and yet every year some kid goes missing in the snow. This whole section of the book felt very weak for me, labouring the point that an ordinary everyday existence had appeal to Shadow but he was caught up in some bigger issues. This was also where the over-obvious murder mystery came in, with the added layer of bathos coming from the fact that nobody thought there was any murder.
This part felt like it was give Shadow a real moral dilemma, weighing up a fantastical world against a real, rooted one where people value him for what he is, but in the end that wasn’t the point, the point was simply stalling. And that left me feeling unsatisfied. I suppose that middle act wouldn’t have mattered if the last part had been really satisfying, but in the end even a climactic clash of epic proportions didn’t seem very satisfactory at all. The antagonists weren’t a well thought-out force to be reckoned with, and there were too few identifiable individuals to care for. At that stage there didn’t seem to be much real threat to Shadow, so there was very little sense of suspense or urgency at the end.
I don’t want to give the impression I thought this was in any way a bad book. It was enjoyable, full of strong images and excellent characterisation. I will certainly watch the adaptation when it comes out. But it was another case of me expecting more than I really got.
At the same time, though, I felt a certain disappointment similar to my feelings at the end of Murakami’s novels. A lot happened, and some of the plot strands were tied up so neatly as to almost be pat, but I still felt like my expectations weren’t fulfilled. I wanted more to happen. I think the problem was that the stakes never seemed genuinely very high.
Conceptually, American Gods is strong. It has a lot in common with Gaiman’s friend and collaborator Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods, only of course set not on a fantasy world but in a rather gritty modern America. In Discworld, it was belief that made a god strong while superficial worship was irrelevant, while that seems somewhat inverted in American Gods but the basic outline of an everyman figure assisting a god whose glory days are in the past while a large conflict approaches is clearly echoed. That said, the books are of course very different beasts and Gaiman is in full adult-writer mode, not shying away from the profane, darkly violent, sexual or indeed hypersexual. Not advised as a Coraline follow-up.
The novel revolves around Shadow, a big guy of indeterminate brown-skinned race who is a very engaging main character, being big and quiet but also inquisitive, loyal, intelligent and unfailingly self-sacrificing. The novel opens with him being released from prison, where he is serving time for a somewhat self-sacrificial crime, expecting life to be much better once he’s released. However, he finds that the life he wanted to return to has crumbled, but has a chance at a new job with a strange old man with the air of a con artist who introduces himself as ‘Wednesday.’
One of my problems with American Gods was that many parts of it were too obvious. I liked Wednesday’s name, as I know not everyone knows the origin of the English names for days, but another character introduced very early but properly revealed much later had a name that was far too blatant. Shadow’s own background was signposted far off, too, as was the overarching plot and the tacked-on murder mystery was so obvious as to feel to me like it shouldn’t have been included at all. Part of my feeling of being unsatisfied, I suppose, derived from this feeling of the big reveals not being at all surprising.
I loved the first third of the book. I enjoyed the bleak vision of modern America Gaiman drew up, of ex-cons and small-town rumours and at the same time, the mysteries of an underworld of gods living amongst us. I loved that the lore of America was tied up in its kitschy roadside attractions, and that traveling around the country was obviously an important part of this story. And I enjoyed both Shadow’s and Wednesday’s characters and their relationship.
But then things meandered. Far too long was spent with Shadow fitting into the community of a small, quiet northern town where everybody knows everybody and yet every year some kid goes missing in the snow. This whole section of the book felt very weak for me, labouring the point that an ordinary everyday existence had appeal to Shadow but he was caught up in some bigger issues. This was also where the over-obvious murder mystery came in, with the added layer of bathos coming from the fact that nobody thought there was any murder.
This part felt like it was give Shadow a real moral dilemma, weighing up a fantastical world against a real, rooted one where people value him for what he is, but in the end that wasn’t the point, the point was simply stalling. And that left me feeling unsatisfied. I suppose that middle act wouldn’t have mattered if the last part had been really satisfying, but in the end even a climactic clash of epic proportions didn’t seem very satisfactory at all. The antagonists weren’t a well thought-out force to be reckoned with, and there were too few identifiable individuals to care for. At that stage there didn’t seem to be much real threat to Shadow, so there was very little sense of suspense or urgency at the end.
I don’t want to give the impression I thought this was in any way a bad book. It was enjoyable, full of strong images and excellent characterisation. I will certainly watch the adaptation when it comes out. But it was another case of me expecting more than I really got.
