However I saw there's a Neverwhere book and I considered getting it, except
avalonjones thought it twee. Somehow I couldn't reconcile twee with the horrors promised in part 2, though I'm sure Gaiman could manage it if anyone could. But I thought, yanno, I *would* kinda like to see more of the Marquis... And then both these ideas fused and I experienced satori. I'd thought there was something slightly off in the Marquis' delivery, as though he were singing a familiar song half a tone flat, or whatever it was Vaughn Williams used to do to murder English folk songs. But it wasn't Joseph's delivery, which was spot on. It was Gaiman being his own brand of arch and insufferable. Yes I know mileage varies on this, but the little I've read of his fiction rubs me the wrong way precisely because of the knowing tone.The oddity of Gaiman is that the tone of his *blog* is perfect: detached, reasonable, civil, friendly, someone you'd be happy to know as a person. Which makes him different from all the other writers who've caused me to say that writers shouldn't keep blogs, a position that's been miserably validated this year. However.
However. Yesterday was a miserable day in TO, an afternoon of headaches and irritability and screaming infings, and *my* day didn't end until 8. Bicycled home in the drizzle and passed Brunswick Ave and a voice said But there *is* a novel, so I cut up Brunswick to BMV. Which never has what I want except when I shouldn't buy it (its collection of Chinese textbooks is particularly notable in this respect) so of course it had a copy of Neverwhere. Which I bought. Am trusting that the memory of the live action charas will ameliorate their presentation in the book.
Not that most of the series characters knocked me over or anything. But oh sweet lord British English is music to the ear after what I normally hear in this town. (Not true: normally I hear a cornucopia of ESL accents and the best Canuck can get, which is Maritimes. But on the street I run into the full Toronto male bray and female tinny, projected from the roof of the mouth. Truly, you'd think half the white women here had no lungs, because they sure don't use them when they talk.) There are few North American accents one can call musical, so Gary Bakewell's lilting Scots-or-whatever (because to my ears it still sounded like the Beatles used to do) was a reminder of what English *can* sound like. It could still have used subtitles, says the tin-eared Canuck in this corner who couldn't hear the difference between a tone 1 and a tone 4 if it came up and bit her.
Also must note that my terribly useful Chinese textbooks were bought for what textbooks cost back in the 60s, which is always a pleasure.
