Neverwhere Review by Melissa La Fountain

The book Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman was definitely my favorite of the two books I had to read over the summer for English. It tells the story of Richard Mayhew, a simple London man. It seems that everything about his life is average and boring, until one day he comes across a young woman named Door, who flips his world upside down...literally. Richard finds himself in London Below, a parallel of the London he knew where being abnormal is the norm. Richard spends the majority of the novel longing for London Above, to be ordinary once again. But once he has met a plethora of peculiar characters, defeated an ominous beast, and become a hero, he realizes that being ordinary isn't what he wants after all. I thought that the way that Neil Gaiman wrote each chapter really put a vivid picture into the readers' minds. His writing is thoroughly descriptive, to the point where if you close your eyes you can perfectly understand how each character and each placed looked. Gaiman also used a rotating point of view method to add more dimension to his novel. This allowed for readers to get inside each character's head and really understand who they were. In a lot of books, you only get the point of view of the protagonist. In Neverwhere, you get the points of view of the protagonist, the antagonist, and every character in between.
Usually, I'm not a very big fan of the books we have to read over the summer. I would much rather read a book that I choose and read because I want to read it, not because I am forced to. However, Neverwhere didn't feel like a book I had to read. I enjoyed it and I'm glad that I had the opportunity to read such a good book.

Picture Source: TV, Pond. "News: New Neverwhere Book". Anglonerd. N.p., 2015. Web. 22 Sept. 2016.