stapsreads

When I was little my ma used to read to me from Eleanor Farjeon's Nursery Rhymes of London Town, a lovely book that made the names that make London what it is into people. (King's cross/ What shall we do?/ His purple robe/ is torn in two...) It was a long time before I saw London itself, and so even to this day the London map in my mind is populated by these personages. Neverwhere is a book that gets this, that makes London a place of two layers, of a richly peopled fantasy world running beneath the surface. Dark and funny, with heroes and villains and swashbuckling, and a wonderful sense of history. My only gripe, really, is that this was an American edition, and so I was constantly being thrown off by pants and flashlights.

Other than that, this was a rather fantastic book, in every sense of the word.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/7604999