American Gods by Neil Gaiman
It's a fascinating book. You get stories within stories. And Shadow is such an interesting character – a not-quite-crook fresh out of jail, getting out to find his beloved wife dead, getting involved with mysterious beings. Then his dead wife starts going around rescuing him from trouble, and she wants to be alive again.
Somewhere in the middle of the story, Shadow’s employer, the powerful Mr. Wednesday, takes him to this very obscure small town, Lakeside, where he was supposed to keep his head down and stay out of trouble. And Lakeside is a very pretty town, with a library and a general store, a raffle based on the time an old wreck of a car will sink when the lake thaws, and a police chief who does not issue tickets but scares the daylights out of speeding drivers. It’s a town that protects its own, welcomes a stranger and helps him get settled, and continues being its pretty self as it has done for a hundred years. You’d love to stay in Lakeside, whether your ancestors were there when the town was built, or you just arrived last weekend.
I think some of us have our own Lakeside. It’s the place where you dream of returning to when you’re done being the high-profile career woman. It’s the place you wish you could have raised your children, so that they could experience playing in the rain the way you did when you were a child. It’s the place where the stores don’t have signboards, but all the old women know where you could get the best pancit, the most intricate carving for your sideboard, the man who could do silkscreen printing. It's the place where children walk to school, and you're not afraid of child molesters. It’s the place where the marketplace comes alive only every Wednesday.
Lakeside would be the little town you left fifteen, twenty years ago because life was so slow there, and nothing really happened except the dances on Halloween and New Year’s Eve, and the town mayor came from a long line of men with the same surnames. You left it because the city held so much promise, and so much light and glitter, and when you came home for a visit you were treated like a minor celebrity because you dressed so fine, you spoke with a different accent, and you ‘had it made out there.’ In the small town everyone went around on foot, chatting, and you could walk all the streets of the whole town in about two hours. In the city you took your car to pick up some bread.
If you visited your Lakeside, you’d believe as you did when you were a child. You were careful about the unseen beings, the dwarfs and the tikbalang and the kapre that were so real when dusk came. You’d see some of the folks offering some rice and boiled egg in the morning. The sick children would be brought to the local doctor, but the local healer would be consulted too, to know which being got offended when the father cut down the mango tree. And when you left Lakeside, you’d leave the beings behind. The city has no place for them.
What if they came with you? What if they wanted to carve an existence in the city?
Somewhere in the middle of the story, Shadow’s employer, the powerful Mr. Wednesday, takes him to this very obscure small town, Lakeside, where he was supposed to keep his head down and stay out of trouble. And Lakeside is a very pretty town, with a library and a general store, a raffle based on the time an old wreck of a car will sink when the lake thaws, and a police chief who does not issue tickets but scares the daylights out of speeding drivers. It’s a town that protects its own, welcomes a stranger and helps him get settled, and continues being its pretty self as it has done for a hundred years. You’d love to stay in Lakeside, whether your ancestors were there when the town was built, or you just arrived last weekend.
I think some of us have our own Lakeside. It’s the place where you dream of returning to when you’re done being the high-profile career woman. It’s the place you wish you could have raised your children, so that they could experience playing in the rain the way you did when you were a child. It’s the place where the stores don’t have signboards, but all the old women know where you could get the best pancit, the most intricate carving for your sideboard, the man who could do silkscreen printing. It's the place where children walk to school, and you're not afraid of child molesters. It’s the place where the marketplace comes alive only every Wednesday.
Lakeside would be the little town you left fifteen, twenty years ago because life was so slow there, and nothing really happened except the dances on Halloween and New Year’s Eve, and the town mayor came from a long line of men with the same surnames. You left it because the city held so much promise, and so much light and glitter, and when you came home for a visit you were treated like a minor celebrity because you dressed so fine, you spoke with a different accent, and you ‘had it made out there.’ In the small town everyone went around on foot, chatting, and you could walk all the streets of the whole town in about two hours. In the city you took your car to pick up some bread.
If you visited your Lakeside, you’d believe as you did when you were a child. You were careful about the unseen beings, the dwarfs and the tikbalang and the kapre that were so real when dusk came. You’d see some of the folks offering some rice and boiled egg in the morning. The sick children would be brought to the local doctor, but the local healer would be consulted too, to know which being got offended when the father cut down the mango tree. And when you left Lakeside, you’d leave the beings behind. The city has no place for them.
What if they came with you? What if they wanted to carve an existence in the city?
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