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Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Lose yourself...

...but not completely!

A few years ago, while looking for something New to read, Matt handed me his copy of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere.

Wow. What an incredible book!

It's quite possible I read it in one day...it was just that good.

I'm a fan of alternate-reality stories...and you get that in Neverwhere. You also get great storytelling, which is even more important.

I knew nothing of Gaiman's work before I met Matt, but I've since learned this guy's a pretty darn good writer.

(The point of the above, by the way, is me recommending this book. Go buy it, or rent it or eBay it or something. It's that good.)

Neverwhere was made into a mini-series some years ago, and it's recently come out on DVD.

If it's even half as good as the book...it'll be worth that month's Netflix fee.

As it stands, Neverwhere stands at #84 and 85 in our queue (it's a mini-series, after all), sandwiched between It Happened One Night and Spellbound.

Should only take eight months or so to get to them!








Idle Chatter:
As it happens, the TV adaptation (a BBC presentation) is just about exactly half as good as the book. The core of the story is there and many of the performances are good (the Marquis de Carrabas is my kind of utter bastard), but the production was handicapped by a typical BBC shoestring budget, making parts of it appear somewhat unconvincing.

It has some nice touches, though: Early in the book, the protagonist is described as looking like a young Paul McCartney. In the TV version, he's played by the same guy who played Paul in the movie "Backbeat."

-M
 
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