American Gods
(2001) by Neil Gaiman
Honestly, I've never read anything like this before.
American
Gods
is sweeping, complex, and fast-paced, with side-stories and
back-stories sprouting from every chapter, as if wishing to become
novels in their own right. I can see why this book won twenty
thousand awards and why everyone has recommended it.
In
a sense, Gaiman here does for America in fiction what Antonín
Dvořák did for it in music at the end of the 19th century:
highlight and artistically adapt the country's cultural artifacts,
which were in plain sight all along. Gaiman imagines the dislocation
that comes from immigrants abandoning their beliefs in order to
assimilate, and what happens to those "gods" when they are
left behind. It's the idea that nothing, not even intangible beliefs
or ideas, ever really vanishes.
