This is a complicated book review to write, but it seems fitting, I guess, for it is a complicated book to read. I nearly gave up on it halfway through, but decided to ride it out. Though to be fair, I did not read the book under the best of circumstances. The first mistake I made was to read it as an e-book as opposed to a physical book. I am of the camp, that we encounter and digest books different depending on the form in which we consume them. There are certain books that work fine to be read in digital form. For me, this is not one of them. It would have been beneficial for me to actually have been able to riffle through pages at times to return to certain passages for a refresher of characters and what had happened to them previously. My second mistake was to read it in short bits here and there with pronounced lapses in between reading times. This added to the sense of confusion and lack of cohesion I struggled to overcome in holding the wandering narrative together.
The driving force that gave me the impetus to fight through to the end was the fact that I really cared about the main character, Shadow, and wanted to see the completion of his journey. We meet Shadow in prison and find out he is close to being released and able to return to his wife. Tragically, his wife is killed in an automobile accident, which results in his being released several days early, though now with little hope or passion for his future. On the plane ride to attend her funeral, he encounters and is hired as a bodyguard by a mysterious man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday, which sends Shadow on a path that will change how he sees the world and his place in it.
The underlying narrative of the book is an upcoming battle between the old gods brought to America by those who immigrated to its shores and the new gods of media, culture, television, etc. The old gods claim their power is waning because the people are forgetting them and turning to the newer ones. Mr. Wednesday is traversing the country trying to recruit the old gods to join the cause. Shadow is not fully aware of who he is working for and what they are really doing when he first signs on to work with him. He is introduced to this new reality slowly and gradually along the way.
Shadow, at his core, seems to be a decent person intent on trying to do the right thing. It his grief and, yes, the appearances in physical form of his deceased wife that keeps him from asking questions about what exactly he has been drawn into much earlier than he does. Though, as we find out by the end of the book, not all of his choices have been his own and he had lost his agency and control of his life’s heading way before we as the reader have been introduced to him.
It was a little disconcerting as a Christian to see Jesus portrayed, albeit in a brief passing reference, as sad and powerless and placed in the same category as the other old gods. Yet, I read this book as a piece of literature (which it is) and not as a spiritual guidebook (which it is not). So, I was able to not let that bother me. Mostly. I guess the fact I felt I had to mention it means it lingered with me to a degree.
The bottom line is this; though, this will probably never be one of those top of my head recommendations to someone who asks what they should read, I would not actively dissuade someone from approaching it. There were some well-written passages and some very thought-provoking themes throughout. There a quite a few sections that I would be excited to do some close reading of and discuss in setting such as some of my college literature classes. And I could see this book resonating with me at some other time in my reading journey. I feel that it was probably not the right book at the right time in my life.
If you have waded through many of my book reviews, you may have seen before and may see it in this one that perhaps I come off as a little wishy-washy and not truly committed to one side or the other in my opinion on a book. There are few books, especially if I have stuck with them to the end, that I will just outright call a bad book. I have too much of a love of books, respect for those who write them, and awareness that each reader is different and as stated above, the knowledge that certain books resonate with people at different times in their lives. The best I can offer in any of my reviews is to share what my experience within the pages was like.
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Notes from a Book Nerd 