American Gods

Our American Gods (by Niel Gaiman) evening was held at Paul and Maite's place on the 3 March.  Again we were treated with a spread of ethnic foods to nibble on throughout the evening.  Present were: Rebekah, Lona, Maite, Paul, Chez, Anne, Nicole, Greg, Marnie, John and Georgia...a good turnout. The book engendered some very lively discussion - and on some issues, divided the room. In one camp was Paul, a Gaiman fanatic.  In the other, Marnie, who thought the book sadly lacked a good editor. 

This is how everyone viewed it in a nutshell. Lona said he imagined the novel as a movie, saying "everything worked".  He scored the book a 9. Greg thought the digressions added to the richness of the book, and enjoyed it as a commentary on America, giving it an 8. John got drawn in "despite the genre", scoring it an 8. Anne thought the descriptions were brilliant, giving it a 7. Georgia enjoyed the diversity of characters but found it in some places disjointed. Georgia gave it 6.5. Nicole admired the telling of classical stories in a contemporary setting, scoring the book with a huge 9.5 - her favourite so far. Chez liked the digressions, but thought there were some parts of the story-line which were unnecessary. Chez gave the novel 6.5 - still higher than Oscar Wilde! Maite enjoyed the mystery aspect, but thought it was not that well structured in places and may have worked better as a collection of short stories. She commented that it was like a soap opera in parts.  She scored it a 7. Marnie thought that he was, overall, a good story-teller but abhorred his "gratuitous horror" ie. his progressively decaying undead wife. Marnie scored it a 7, "loving the ending". Rebekah hadn't finished the book but had really enjoyed what she read, giving it an 8. Unsurprisingly, Paul gave it the perfect score - 10 - finding the book transported him...."it was ambitious"..."by far the most layered book we've done so far".