Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

I discovered Neil Gaiman rather recently, but am no less an ardent fan for this delay.  To quote a fellow librarian, “if [Gaiman] published a phone book, I would read it,” and Norse Mythology is a far cry from such a dry litany. My prior knowledge of Norse lore was scant and unformed. In my mind, the birthplace of Scandinavian legend was one where chiseled Marvel heroes and goofy Cressida Cowell creations frolicked through a wintry and forbidding landscape. So, the terrain covered in this book was a fairly novel one for me, and I was eager to give Gaiman’s take on it a look.  I was not disappointed.  As in all of his works, the characters, however fantastical, are made real.  A reader is able to look into the eyes of even the most uncommon of giants, and see him or herself reflected back. 

The book is structured as a series of mostly chronological stories involving the Norse Gods, leading up to Rangnarok, i.e. the Nordic apocalypse. Some of these characters I had met before in some form (Thor, Odin, Loki), while others were new to me (Hel, Balder, Frey, Freya). Several of the tales have the feel of a creation myth about them: the origin of fall feasting, the source of poetic inspiration, and the gates of Hell; others are wry re-tellings of the various exploits of the Gods. Gaiman brings these ancient heroes to life with his characteristic insight and wit. His passion for the Norse tales of old becomes your own by the novel’s end.  I would highly recommend this novel to lovers of myth and fantasy.

-Jennifer Wilson

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Since discovering author Neil Gaiman last summer, I’ve been meting out his novels to myself like a harried mother with a limited supply of Halloween candy.  So, after surviving 2015 relatively intact, I rewarded myself with his 2006 novel, Anansi Boys. The novel proved to be a treat worth savoring as it exemplifies the very things that make a Gaiman novel worth letting your clothes lie wrinkling in the dryer: characters that are funny, endearing, and immanently human; a story that is fantastical and engrossing; and a narrative voice that is confiding and not a tiny bit cheeky.

Anansi Boys builds upon themes that readers of his earlier novel, American Gods, will find familiar; however, it can stand alone perfectly well.  The story opens in England, with “everyman” Charlie Nancy.  He’s your average work-a-day fella, the archetypical accountant: shy, quiet, unassuming, and unremarkable in any way.  When pressured by his do-gooder fiancé to attempt to contact his long-estranged father to invite him to their impending nuptials (Charlie’s reluctance to do so stems from what he perceives as a childhood of perpetual and near-fatal embarrassment at the hands of, via proximity to, and on behalf of said father).  Upon phoning a childhood neighbor in Florida, Charlie is surprised to find that his father has quite suddenly died. He crosses the Atlantic to just miss the funeral, and learns two things that beggar belief.  The kindly old neighbor, Mrs. Callyanne Higgler, informs him, matter-of-factly, that his father was the God/Legend Anansi, and that he has a brother, who inherited all the father-to-son god-like traits.  When asked how he might reach this heretofore unknown brother, Mrs. Higgler casually mentions that he need only to speak to a spider on the matter.  One long transatlantic flight and several glasses of wine later, Charlie, on a bit of a lark, does just that.  What follows from there is a wildly entertaining journey that crosses continents and worlds.

Lovers of fantasy and/or plain old clever writing need look no further, Neil Gaiman has it covered.

Posted by Jennifer Wilson

Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman

Full disclosure: Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere, The Graveyard Book) is one of those authors I would follow to the ends of the literary earth. If he published a phone book, I would read it knowing that he had put his own unique touch on the pages and that I would come away from it with a greater understanding of humanity.

Luckily, Trigger Warning is not a phone book, but a wonderful collection of “short fictions and disturbances." Gaiman admits that the collection is a hodge-podge of horror, ghost stories, science fiction, fairy tales, fabulism, and poetry. The collection features a number of well-known characters (Dr. Who, David Bowie, Sherlock Holmes, and Sleeping Beauty, to name a few) as well as a lot of characters one hopes to only encounter in the pages of a book. Fans of Gaiman’s award-winning American Gods will be happy to see a new story featuring Shadow, “Black Dog,” which was one of my favorites in the collection.

While the stories are quite varied in subject, Gaiman ties them all together with a thoughtfully written introduction. In it, he looks at the phrase “trigger warning” which originated as a way to warn people about content on the Internet that might trigger anxiety or other negative reactions for some readers/viewers. Then the concept began to expand into the “real world,” and colleges began discussing putting trigger warnings on certain works of literature and art. He ponders, “…Are fictions safe places? And then I ask myself, Should they be safe places?” Gaiman’s exploration of this idea is well considered and worth reading all on its own.

It is with these thoughts in mind that one can look at the stories in Trigger Warning not with an eye on the fantastical nature of the tales, but instead thinking about the truths we so often experience in fiction. For example, the imaginary high school girlfriend who later comes to life in “The Thing About Cassandra” may not seem like a story to which one can easily relate but the consequences of past lies and half-truths catching up to us is. This is where Gaiman truly shines, in taking the reality of everyday life and holding it up to a fun-house mirror, reflecting back at us a somehow truer sense of humanity.

-Portia Kapraun