Neverwhere
A Novel
by Neil Gaiman

List Price: $13.95
Pages: 400
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0060557818
Publisher: Perennial

Richard Mayhew is an unassuming young businessman living in London, with a boring career in finance and a pretty but demanding fiancée. Then one night he stumbles across a girl bleeding on the sidewalk. He stops to help her, and the life he knows vanishes in an instant.

Several hours later, the girl is gone, too. And by the following morning, Richard Mayhew has been erased from his world. His bank cards no longer work, taxi drivers won't stop for him, his fiancée doesn't recognize him, and his landlord rents his apartment out to strangers. He has become invisible and inexplicably consigned to a London of shadows and darkness -- to a city of monsters and saints, assassins and angels -- that exists entirely in a subterranean labyrinth of sewer canals and abandoned subway stations. He has fallen through the cracks of reality and has landed somewhere different, somewhere that is Neverwhere.

Neverwhere is the home of the Lady Door, the mysterious girl whom Richard rescued in the London Above. A personage of great power and nobility in this murky, candlelit realm, she is on a mission to discover the persons responsible for her family's slaughter and, in doing so, preserve this strange underworld kingdom from the malevolence that means to destroy it. And, with nowhere else to turn, Richard Mayhew must now join the Lady Door's entourage in their determined and possibly fatal quest.

For the dreaded journey ever-downward -- through bizarre anachronisms and dangerous incongruities, and into dusty corners of stalled time -- is Richard's final hope, his last road back to a "real world" that is growing disturbingly less real by the minute.

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1. Who is Richard Mayhew? What defines his everyday life in London? How would you characterize his relationship with Jessica? Who does he encounter on the street who alters the course of his life? How is this event predicted by the old fortuneteller at his going away party?

2. Who are Mr. Vandemar and Mr. Croup? Describe their personalities. Did you find any of their appearances in the book terrifying or humorous? Which ones? Who are they searching for at the beginning of the book?

3. Who is the Lady Door? What are some of her unusual powers? What creatures help Door gain access to the marquis de Carabas? What is her quest?

4. How would you describe the marquis de Carabas? Did he seem entirely trustworthy to you? With whom does he collude? What is the significance of the silver box he gives to Old Bailey? What transformation does de Carabas undergo in Neverwhere?

5. Where does Richard meet Hunter? How does she help him in the London Below? How does she react to the disappearance of Anaesthesia? Whom does she vow to protect? How is that pledge ultimately compromised? Were you surprised by her betrayal?

6. How would you describe London Below? What serves as its primary mode of transportation? Who populates it? What regular occasion serves as a kind of neutral meeting ground?

7. Name some of the more eccentric characters Richard Mayhew encounters in London Below. Were there any aspects of this region that you found particularly fascinating or easy to envision?

8. Did you feel sympathy for any character in particular? Did you feel revulsion for any of the characters? Which ones?

9. Of the special powers enjoyed by Islington, Door, de Carabas, and Hunter, which ones did you find most marvelous? Which abilities would you like to possess? How did Richard interact with this motley crew?

10. Were you surprised by Richard's decision at the end of Neverwhere? Why do you think he made such a choice?

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