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American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition: A Novel Kindle Edition
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First published in 2001, American Gods became an instant classic—an intellectual and artistic benchmark from the multiple-award-winning master of innovative fiction, Neil Gaiman. Now discover the mystery and magic of American Gods in this tenth anniversary edition. Newly updated and expanded with the author’s preferred text, this commemorative volume is a true celebration of a modern masterpiece by the one, the only, Neil Gaiman.
A storm is coming . . .
Locked behind bars for three years, Shadow did his time, quietly waiting for the magic day when he could return to Eagle Point, Indiana. A man no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, all he wanted was to be with Laura, the wife he deeply loved, and start a new life.
But just days before his release, Laura and Shadow’s best friend are killed in an accident. With his life in pieces and nothing to keep him tethered, Shadow accepts a job from a beguiling stranger he meets on the way home, an enigmatic man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday. A trickster and rogue, Wednesday seems to know more about Shadow than Shadow does himself.
Life as Wednesday’s bodyguard, driver, and errand boy is far more interesting and dangerous than Shadow ever imagined—it is a job that takes him on a dark and strange road trip and introduces him to a host of eccentric characters whose fates are mysteriously intertwined with his own. Along the way Shadow will learn that the past never dies; that everyone, including his beloved Laura, harbors secrets; and that dreams, totems, legends, and myths are more real than we know. Ultimately, he will discover that beneath the placid surface of everyday life a storm is brewing—an epic war for the very soul of America—and that he is standing squarely in its path.
Relevant and prescient, American Gods has been lauded for its brilliant synthesis of “mystery, satire, sex, horror, and poetic prose” (Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World) and as a modern phantasmagoria that “distills the essence of America” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). It is, quite simply, an outstanding work of literary imagination that will endure for generations.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherWilliam Morrow
- Publication dateJune 21, 2011
- File size9279 KB
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- All we have to believe with is our senses: the tools we use to perceive the world, our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end.Highlighted by 5,862 Kindle readers
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Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Shadow Moon, recently released from prison and dealing with his wife's death, accepts a job offer from the mysterious Mr. Wednesday. Together they travel across America gathering up Mr. Wednesday's creepy friends. Soon Shadow discovers this road trip involves the upcoming epic battle between the old gods of the immigrants and today's new gods credit cards, TV, and the Internet. He also experiences repeat visits from the reanimated corpse of his dead wife, Laura. Shadow's personal tale and the details of American small-town life are well developed compared with the not-well-defined plot. The focus shifts from the gods' Armageddon to Shadow's life, to subplots about secondary characters. The book has wit but is too busy and not very engaging and includes some graphic language, sex, and disturbing events. George Guidall's clear, well-articulated narration contributes to a positive listening experience. Fans will no doubt enjoy the subject matter and the mythic scope. Denise A. Garofalo, Mid-Hudson Lib. Syst., Poughkeepsie, NY
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Review
From the Publisher
From the Back Cover
First published in 2001, American Gods became an instant classic—an intellectual and artistic benchmark from the multiple-award-winning master of innovative fiction, Neil Gaiman. Now discover the mystery and magic of American Gods in this tenth anniversary edition. Newly updated and expanded with the author’s preferred text, this commemorative volume is a true celebration of a modern masterpiece by the one, the only, Neil Gaiman.
A storm is coming . . .
Locked behind bars for three years, Shadow did his time, quietly waiting for the magic day when he could return to Eagle Point, Indiana. A man no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, all he wanted was to be with Laura, the wife he deeply loved, and start a new life.
But just days before his release, Laura and Shadow’s best friend are killed in an accident. With his life in pieces and nothing to keep him tethered, Shadow accepts a job from a beguiling stranger he meets on the way home, an enigmatic man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday. A trickster and rogue, Wednesday seems to know more about Shadow than Shadow does himself.
Life as Wednesday’s bodyguard, driver, and errand boy is far more interesting and dangerous than Shadow ever imagined—it is a job that takes him on a dark and strange road trip and introduces him to a host of eccentric characters whose fates are mysteriously intertwined with his own. Along the way Shadow will learn that the past never dies; that everyone, including his beloved Laura, harbors secrets; and that dreams, totems, legends, and myths are more real than we know. Ultimately, he will discover that beneath the placid surface of everyday life a storm is brewing—an epic war for the very soul of America—and that he is standing squarely in its path.
Relevant and prescient, American Gods has been lauded for its brilliant synthesis of “mystery, satire, sex, horror, and poetic prose” (Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World) and as a modern phantasmagoria that “distills the essence of America” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). It is, quite simply, an outstanding work of literary imagination that will endure for generations.
About the Author
Neil Gaiman is the New York Times bestselling and multi-award winning author and creator of many beloved books, graphic novels, short stories, film, television and theatre for all ages. He is the recipient of the Newbery and Carnegie Medals, and many Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner Awards. Neil has adapted many of his works to television series, including Good Omens (co-written with Terry Pratchett) and The Sandman. He is a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR and Professor in the Arts at Bard College. For a lot more about his work, please visit: https://www.neilgaiman.com/
From AudioFile
Product details
- ASIN : B004YW4L5K
- Publisher : William Morrow; Anniversary edition (June 21, 2011)
- Publication date : June 21, 2011
- Language : English
- File size : 9279 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 565 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #14,577 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #52 in Read & Listen for Less
- #61 in Religion & Spirituality (Kindle Store)
- #86 in Romance Literary Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
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American Gods: A Novel
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About the author
Neil Gaiman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books, including Norse Mythology, Neverwhere, and The Graveyard Book. Among his numerous literary awards are the Newbery and Carnegie medals, and the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner awards. He is a Professor in the Arts at Bard College.
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Gaiman's themes here are weighty, and they could drag off and drown your average narrative with their importance. Gaiman doesn't even try to fight this; he lets the book be tossed to and fro, gyrating wildly and leaping off into tangents in order to explore part after part of his post-mythology mythos. As such, though the story is interesting on its own, and the character's usually well drawn, this is more a novel about America and its synthesis than it is about anything else.
The gods were brought here by the immigrants (the Irish leprechaun upon ships during the days of famine; the pixies and their ilk from English prisoners; Odin from exploratory and bloodthirsty Viking longboats; the Egyptian pantheon of Anubis, Thoth, Horus, Bast settling in New Egypt; Anansi from - well, you get the idea) but things have changed, and, in the process of acclimatization, the believers became American, and the gods were cut loose. Now, as time moves on, their belief and traditions are fading fast towards zero, and the old deities are desperate to not simply drop out of existence.
Now, in this new world, the actual facets of the gods' being are no longer important, the funeral director gods of death are as on the verge as a New York City djinn, and all that still matters is where they came from and whether they still exist at all:
"'I have a brother. They say, you put us together, we are like one person, you know? When we are young, his hair, it is very blonde, very light, his eyes are blue, and people say, he is the good one. And my hair is very dark, darker than yours even, and people say I am the rogue, you know? I am the bad one. And now time passes, and my hair is gray. His hair, too, I think is gray. And you look at us, you would not know what was light and who was dark.'" (p. 79)
Simplification is not the only change brought on by the passage of years. The majority of Gods in the book fall into one of two pathways. The first try - in vain? - to recreate the glory days, always striving to remember. The world, however, has moved on, and their attempts frequently become depressingly comical, as they try to assert their dominance over a world that has forgotten them, such as Eoster, trying to claim that she's still beloved due to the name of the holiday. In many cases, being the American incarnation of these gods, they don't even have a period of power to look back upon, such as Czernobog who cannot even contemplate his days as a dark god anymore and is able to do nothing else but dream about his years in a slaughterhouse.
The other potential path is a darker one still, and it is one that we are introduced to at the end of the very first chapter: the perversion of everything that the god once held holy. The Queen of Sheba has become a prostitute. Even that, however, is not far enough. In a twisted incarnation of her need for belief, she forcers her forces her lovers to worship her and sexually devours them for sustenance. Her words hold true for her and for the array of similarly striving gods we glimpse in the narrative: "There is nothing holy in [my] profession. Not anymore." (p. 373)
But is the decline of the gods really such a bad thing? In one part of the story, we see a funeral home run by the Egyptian gods of death. They provide a more personal touch, a send off by something with more of a soul than the mechanical filling of orders provided by a big funeral company. In another subplot, we get to see a community still run and safeguarded by a supernatural being. The community's exterior is enticing and gleaming, which hides the sacrifice needed to maintain it.
Is such a thing worth it for a more ordered world? Has our modern world of machines and computers destroyed wonder and human contact? It's impossible to truly a question like that, and Gaiman doesn't. American Gods is not a narrative of answers, but rather a tapestry of questions. You will never get a definitive answer of how the gods interact with mortals; you will never know whether the old gods were right to fight for their survival; you will never know whether the gods will one day be gone completely. But you don't need to know. In American Gods, Gaiman asks the questions, and I think that every reader will have their own answers.
The sprawling nature of the themes, and the narration's tendency to leap after them wherever they may go, leads to an incredibly meandering text. Our main character Shadow, who is roped into the conflict as the assistant to Mr. Wednesday only hours after leaving prison. While it seems, at first, that the two are working towards a definite goal, Shadow is soon sent off to location after location without any discernible rhyme or reason.
Further complicating matters - if you're a fan of anything even approaching linier plots - are the interludes, taken from the modern incarnation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. These stories feature brand new characters, often separated from the main narrative by spans of decades, living their lives and either interacting with or contributing to the nature of the various scattered American deities.
Somehow, Gaiman pulls all of this off. The trick is, I think, his intuitive grasp of character. He only need mention a name and spout a few lines of dialogue and, poof, a fully grown man appears on the stage. Each interlude feels complete enough to form its own text, and each adds to the main narrative in immeasurable ways.
And yet, this grasp of character is not applied to one character. Shadow, whose eyes we spend the vast majority of the book looking out of, is told:
'You're not dead'" she said. 'But I'm not sure that you're alive, either. Not really.'
[...]
'I love you,' she said dispassionately. 'You're my puppy. But [...] You're like this big, solid, man-shaped hole in the world.' She frowned. 'Even when we were together. I love being with you. You adored me, and you would do anything for me. But sometimes I'd go into a room and I wouldn't think there was anybody in there. And I'd turn the lights on, or I'd turn the lights off, and I'd realize that you were in there, sitting on your own, not reading, not watching TV, not doing anything.'" (p. 370-371)
After his release from prison, and the death of his wife, Shadow retreats into himself, and it is rare for the reader to get a glimpse inside. This leads to a good portion of the book feeling aimless, as we're cast about in Shadow's wake, without him even knowing - or caring - where he's going. The reader that is willing to follow will eventually come to realize that Shadow's recalcitrance is not shallowness, but, in order to get to that point, you need to be willing to follow Gaiman on all of his digressions.
On the subject of the book's prose, Gaiman says in the included interview: "I wanted to write American Gods in what I thought of as an American style - clean, simple, uncluttered - and push the narrator further into the background than I had in previous books. But the narrator crept out in the "coming to America" chapters, where I got to play with a wider set of voices." (p. 596)
It's true that the writing is more subdued than it is in Neverwhere or Anansi Boys, the plot less self aware. But this is still a Gaiman novel, and it's still filled with the delicious idiosyncrasies of language that characterize all of the man's writing. There are sections here that are jaw dropping in their grandeur, and there are sections that are laugh out loud funny, and both build with the other to create a wry and majestic experience, filled with larger than life characters who are anything but above sarcasm.
American Gods looks like a simple read on the surface. Underneath, you soon come to realize the depth that is packed into every scene and every single glance. This is a book that is impossible to really predict, so come to it and get ready to be swept along. While occasionally directionless, American Gods is simply something that needs to be experienced. This is not the most entertaining book that I've read of Gaiman, but it is undoubtedly the best.
Shadow is serving out the final days of his three-year prison sentence, counting the moments until he can return to his beloved wife Laura, get a job from his best friend Robbie, and start putting the past behind him. When he�s summoned to the warden�s office and told he can go free a few days early, Shadow�s naturally suspicious; the prison system isn�t known for impulsive acts of kindness. It turns out that Laura�s dead, killed in the wee hours in a car accident. No need for an autopsy, though � it�s quite evident what her last meal consisted of, since she died with her face in Robbie�s lap (the sexual act being the direct cause of the accident). So: no wife, no buddy, no job, no life. Shadow�s a free man, but he�s far from happy.
On the flight home, barely able to think through the maelstrom of anger and sorrow and bile, Shadow gets a job offer from a strange man in a pale-colored suit who introduces himself as Mr. Wednesday. Shadow declines, but Wednesday persists; Shadow flees, but Wednesday follows. He�s offering a job as a sort of bodyguard or messenger � Shadow will go where Wednesday wants him to, and do as he asks. For this, he�ll receive five hundred dollars a week, and when Wednesday�s done with him, Shadow can go free. Numb with misery and indifferent to his fate, Shadow reluctantly agrees, and drinks three glasses of mead to seal the deal. And that�s when things start to get really strange.
America is, of course, a melting pot. And when all the immigrants over all the centuries settled here, they brought their gods with them, and anchored them to the land with belief and prayer, ritual and sacrifice. And then�the believers died. They were succeeded by generations who dismissed the old gods as quaint, or turned them into cutesy, powerless caricatures, and finally forgot them altogether. But gods need worshipers to survive � they feed on belief, and on prayers dedicated in their names. Gods can die too, and without the support of the faithful, they simply fade away, helpless and forgotten.
Wednesday is a member of the old guard, and he tells Shadow that there�s a war coming between the old gods and the new: snotty upstarts personifying technology, or media, who are determined to refashion America in their own image and sweep the board clear of all the doddering old-timers. Wednesday�s making the rounds, ferreting out all the disappearing gods and trying to convince them to join up for one last, glorious battle. If they can�t regain their old dominions and power, then at least they can go out with a bang, and take some of the obnoxious new deities along with them. As Wednesday�s right-hand man, Shadow follows him through strange realms and other worlds, on a desperate scavenger hunt of the gods. But Shadow has a much bigger part to play in the upcoming struggle than he suspects, and his path will take him to places he�s never dreamed of � or, more accurately, places that exist only in dreams.
Neil Gaiman is best known for his excellent comic book, "The Sandman," and Gaiman fans will recognize familiar themes in this novel: the slow deaths of old gods, the blurred boundaries between reality and dreams, the idea of deities as human creations that take on independent existence but which ultimately rely on humans for survival. With an impressive and, apparently, comprehensive command of mythology, Gaiman effortlessly throws gods and goddesses into his narrative by the handful, like a master chef who doesn�t bother measuring but trusts his skills to make the mixture come out right. And it does: rich, dark, and deeply mysterious, Gaiman�s beautifully imagined vignettes (short stand-alone chapters about ancient peoples and their gods) add touches of poignancy and, yes, humanity to the gods� bombastic grandstanding. As I read, I visualized Sandman-esque art enhancing the text; this would make a friggin� awesome graphic novel.
Surprisingly, there�s quite a bit of character development, centered on the conflict between the gods� and goddesses� larger-than-life egos and their diminishing power and influence in the world. If anyone comes across as a little flat, it�s Shadow, but he has to play the straight man in order to guide us through this strange and marvelous alternate reality. Not a light read, by any means (if only because you�ll want to stop and enjoy the inside jokes and references Gaiman sprinkles here and there), but intriguing and compelling, American Gods is a deeply satisfying read. If you think there�s not enough religion in America these days, maybe you�re just not looking for the right gods.