As Neil Gaiman says in the prologue of this book that he wanted to write an 'Alice in the wonderland' for adults and he has done it in a very compatible way. He takes us in two worlds; similar yet very different in many ways; London above and London below and also in each of these worlds belong, two protagonists, Richard and Door (yeah, an actual name of a girl). One is a regular chaotic, monotonous world that we live in and the other is the magical world of which we all dream of at some or the other point of time in our life. In Gaiman's fluid language I travelled through extraordinary lives of its characters. The best part of reading this book was listening to it in Neil Gaiman's voice in my mind (after having listened to so many interviews and talks of Neil), his dreamy voice was an added benefit for me. I'm a Gaiman fan through and through now.
I picked this book up because I liked its cover and binding. I saw that it has won awards and title seemed interesting. This book was not at all what I had presumed; it's a tale of a nuclear family living in Mahim in 1bhk flat and the mother is mentally unstable. I could not find right words to describe this poignant story of Em, Big Hoom and their two children. How a son copes with his mother going from ups and downs of bipolar, schizophrenia, manic depressive states, how a love story starts just as a flirtatious gesture and goes on to become a great one, how a woman goes from eccentric to mad, how a husband keeps his calm and becomes a rock to his unstable wife. It's a story consisting of many stories and is made of real, hard-hitting emotions and practicality. Mr. Pinto, I can't even imagine how much of a soul you had to put in this story. Stories like these take something out of you, books like these change you. It did change me.
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Em and The Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto