Book Review: "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman

ISBN 0-7472-7417-7

First Edition Headline Feature, 2001

Second Edition Headline Review, 2005 (£7.99)

I don’t care to place American Gods - or, indeed, any of Neil Gaiman’s work – in a genre. If anything, this novel is an amalgamation of fantasy fiction, modern crime thriller, a whodunit mystery, and factual treatise on the nature of the Gods, with added spice from short-story-land and satire-central. There’s dark humour here, erotica, car chases, gun fights, political statements, religious wars, and most importantly, Odin.

Yet it’s not really Odin’s (in this book mostly known as Mr. Wednesday, Old One-Eye, and Allfather) story. American Gods is the story of Shadow, who on the day he is due to be released from his three year prison stay, is told that his wife has been killed in a car accident. Upon getting a plane to where the funeral will be held, Shadow meets Mr.Wednesday, who ‘hires’ him as his bodyguard, consequently enmeshing him in a centuries old battle between the ‘old Gods’ of America and the ‘new Gods’ – technology, journalism, media, the internet. The old Gods were either native to the lands, or they came over with their worshippers – with the Irish indentured servants, the African slaves, with Muslims and Hindus and Arabs. Now, they struggle to survive in a world where their worship is dying out, and where the new gods are hell-bent on destroying their existence.

But, as always with Gaiman, there’s more to it than that. There are several twists, and I’m not going to tell you what they are. But trust me – you’ll never see ‘em coming.

The most fantastic thing about American Gods (other than Gaiman’s gold-dust writing style and ability to tell a tale like a master) is the way the Gods are portrayed. Odin is a conman, a gambler, and a shapeshifter; Anansi (Mr. Nancy) is a pussy-obsessed karaoke enthusiast; Anubis and Thoth own a funeral parlour; and what’s more is that the Gods Gaiman brings to life in this book are very real. They are the kind of real that one might expect from a devotee’s description of their experiences with them. If you, as a Pagan, read this book, you’ll inevitably find yourself saying “I recognize him” because Gaiman has got these deities spot on. Part of the fun of the book is trying to identify which God is which beneath their 20^th century persona – some of them you’ll recognize instantaneously, whilst others are less well-known (such as the Slavic deity Czernobog.)

Throughout the book are interspersed short stories that bear no relevance to Shadow’s journey – but they do show how different sets of Gods taking root in America. These short stories are often moving, powerful, and poignant, in particular the one about African twins who are taken as slaves to different parts of America, and end up founding Haitian and New Orleans Vodou. They focus on the human devotee’s lives, and how they brought about the existence of the Gods in America.

American Gods draws you into the action like a spider traps a fly in its web. Once you’re in, you can’t pull yourself out – and you don’t want to. You have to follow the story to its strange and unseen conclusion that will leave you laughing, crying, and begging for more from Gaiman.

Luckily, he wrote a sequel, Anansi Boys, which is every bit as wonderful.