American Gods

It occurs to me as I'm looking at the front page of my blog with "Popular Posts" and seeing the post about Good Omens listed there that I have never blogged this.  I don't know why.  Oversight, I suppose.  Time to fix that as I've finished a reread recently and we stand on the cusp of its 10th anniversary re-release on the 21st.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman is one of my all-time favorite books.  I come back to it again and again.  The concept of it, the idea that the gods of myth and legend are very much alive and walking among humanity, intrigued me from the minute I picked up the book and looked at the blurb on the back.  An interesting idea, though, is the least of what AG is.

A friend of mine read AG for the first time recently and commented on it after he was done that he felt like it was about three different books in one.  That's not a bad way to think about it.  Most obviously, of course, there is an absolute feast for anybody who loves myth and legend.  Some of it is overt; some of it is like playing "Twenty Questions" with little hints and clues about the identity of the characters being given to you over the space of chapters or longer to see if you know which pantheon or deity they fit. Some of them are very obvious and some of them are obscure.  They run wide range, especially as the novel progresses, and that for me was delightful.  Too many novels that dabble in the gods confine themselves to one pantheon, one nation.  Gaiman took them all, embraced them, invited them all to play, made some new ones.  It's fantastic. There is also a mystery novel hidden inside the larger storyline, at least one.  And then there is a hero's journey in the classic sense, something straight out of the Odyssey with a man on a quest.  Intermingled with it is that epic quest of self-discovery that every man must take.  Here it happens to involve the gods, but they are not the most important pieces of it.  The focus comes to rest on the choices of the main character and so it really has almost nothing to do with the deities in the end.  Present also are snippets of America's history, vignettes beautifully told, and I'm sure I'm leaving something out.  It is a book that does not stop giving.

This is why I can keep coming back to it.  Every time I reread it, I see more, understand more of it.  And I never stop feeling that "hammer stroke" when I'm done.  It's rare that I feel that even the first time through, but the beauty of the prose and the storyline takes me every single time.  Its ending is poignant and beautiful.  Its characters feel and suffer and rejoice and grow.  Gaiman, through the gift of his storytelling, helps us to grow, too, as we travel with them.

I cannot wait to see the 10th anniversary edition.  I have a paperback edition, much abused, loaned, tattered, and loved of the original.  I have it on my Kindle, too, and I mostly reread from there.  I'm sure my friends online all start rolling their eyes when they see the first of the quotes pop up in annotation from the Kindle (I do so love that I can share from my highlights with the Kindle).  I want to see what has been added, even if it's just Gaiman's thoughts about the book 10 years later.  It will add even more enjoyment to something that is already a source of great pleasure to me.