American Gods by Neil Gaiman

"There are churches all across the States, though," said Shadow.

"In every town. Sometimes on every block. And about as significant, in this context, as dentists' offices. No, in the USA, people still get the call, or some of them, and they feel themselves being called from the transcendent void, and they respond to it by building a model out of beer bottles of somewhere they've never visited, or by erecting a giant bat house in some part of the country that bats have traditionally declined to visit. Roadside attractions: people feel themselves being pulled to places where, in other parts of the world, they would recognize that part of themselves that is truly transcendent, and buy a hot dog and walk around, feeling satisfied on a level they cannot truly describe, and profoundly dissatisfied on a level beneath that."

"You have some pretty whacked-out theories," said Shadow.

-American Gods

When we meet Shadow, the hero of American Gods, he's finishing up a three-year stint in prison. Although he was guilty, we sense that he's a good guy who got mixed up in some bad business. In the last week of his sentence, he's blindsided by news of his wife's death. He's released early in order to attend the funeral, and on his way home he meets a character who calls himself Wednesday. Wednesday seems to be familiar with Shadow's life and has an uncanny ability to show up wherever Shadow is. Numb with grief and bereft of the life he thought had been waiting for him, Shadow is a man without a plan. When the mysterious Wednesday offers him a job, he takes it.

Wednesday wants Shadow to work as a bodyguard as he prepares for the coming war. What war, you might ask? A war among the gods. America, it quickly becomes apparent, is home to many - those brought over in the minds of immigrants from all over the world, as well as the new gods of commerce and technology. The old gods have been fading from the national consciousness and are ready to take a stand against the powerful new gods - except, of course, it's really much more complicated than that.

Although it took me a little while to get into the story, by the end of American Gods I was pretty absorbed. Gaiman (perhaps unsurprisingly for any reader familiar with his work*) has a few good tricks up his sleeve. I hesitate to say too much, but the evolution of the character of Laura (Shadow's wife) was particularly interesting. Gaiman also shows a really impressive ease in writing a story steeped in so much mythology. I think I would have appreciated the book even more had I been more knowledgeable about the various gods who pop up** - other than sketchy memories of Norse mythology and Anansi stories, I was pretty much out of my depth. It certainly makes one appreciate the vast amount of research that must have gone into this book, though.

I once read (on the internets, naturally) someone propose that American Gods would make an excellent HBO miniseries. I think it would be a huge challenge to adapt but, wow, that would be wild.

Up next: The End of Overeating by David A. Kessler. I'm actually about halfway through - nothing revelatory so far, but it's been pretty interesting nonetheless.

*Have I mentioned lately how much I loved The Graveyard Book?

**This is a super great resource for figuring out which gods are depicted in the novel: only the gods are real