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A Walking Tour of the Shambles
Gene Wolfe and Neil Gaiman invite you to tour the Shambles, that historic old Chicago neighborhood which miraculously survived the Great Fire of 1871. ('Ya can't burn Hell,' as one local politician laughingly remarked.) Uniquely Chicago, the Shambles offers an array of delights for the intrepid sightseer: Cereal House with its Terribly Strange Bed (be sure to fill out the 'next of kin' form if you stay the night: a quaint touch adding to the fun of an overnight visit); the House of Clocks boasts a collection of 20,000 time pieces Ñ make sure you arrive on the hour, for an unforgettable moment; the historic H.H. Holmes' House with the bars on his children's windows still intact; Saunders Park, a soothing respite from the city streets (if one is careful), with its gardens, statuary, ornamental lake and the infamous Petting Zoo (a favorite with children, but it's best not to bring your own); plus many more intriguing sights . . .
In the finest tradition of Charles Addams and Edward Gorey, our trustworthy guides Gene Wolfe and Neil Gaiman reveal the secrets of the Shambles, finding the best places to eat, (and where not to accept food under any circumstances), where to begin your walking tour, and when to run.
The Shambles has been called a place of dark magic and deadly menace. Many will insist there is no such place. Most pray it does not exist. Certainly, a spot not to be missed by any avid sightseer.
Come along . . . walk lively, now. The inhabitants of the Shambles are dying to meet you.
This lovely edition of A Walking Tour of the Shambles sports a cover by Gahan Wilson, America's reigning King of Whimsical Terrors, plus interior illustrations of Shambles' locales by Randy Broecker and Earl Geier, two daring Chicagoans.
58 pages, Paperback
First published April 15, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
November 25, 2025
One part Charles Adams, one part Month Python, one part Douglas Adams, a dash of H.P. Lovecraft and add in some recipes in the back from Molly Graw’s restaurant which is like Julia Child on acid and arsenic and you have Wolfe & Gaiman’s brief walking tour of the Shambles ( loosely based on a few blocks in Chicago).
Some of the highlight laughs:
“Take a ticket from the conveniently machine, and the arm will lift. Do not attempt to take the watch from the wrist of the arm”.
“Should you be accompanied by children, you will want to visit the Saunders Park Petting Zoo, particularly if the children accompanying you are not your own”.
And a book for further reading _Molly Graw’s 1001 Disturbing Things to do with Leftovers_
Some of the highlight laughs:
“Take a ticket from the conveniently machine, and the arm will lift. Do not attempt to take the watch from the wrist of the arm”.
“Should you be accompanied by children, you will want to visit the Saunders Park Petting Zoo, particularly if the children accompanying you are not your own”.
And a book for further reading _Molly Graw’s 1001 Disturbing Things to do with Leftovers_
December 28, 2008
I was absolutely enchanted by this book! I love to travel, and love "real" travel guides, and this book captures the chatty feel of a good walking tour book extremely well.
Sometimes with collaborations, the two authors' influences can be felt very distinctly - like you can tell which parts "belong" to one author or the other. I didn't feel that way about this book at all. Gaiman and Wolfe are both so good at building weird and detailed worlds, and both have such quirky senses of humor, that I just couldn't tell who wrote what. In fact the book reads like the two authors spent a drunk and silly long weekend coming up with the whole thing.
While this book is not currently available new on Amazon, it *is* available (at least as of when I wrote this review) directly through the publisher, American Fantasy Press. Don't pay the exorbitant second-hand prices.
Sometimes with collaborations, the two authors' influences can be felt very distinctly - like you can tell which parts "belong" to one author or the other. I didn't feel that way about this book at all. Gaiman and Wolfe are both so good at building weird and detailed worlds, and both have such quirky senses of humor, that I just couldn't tell who wrote what. In fact the book reads like the two authors spent a drunk and silly long weekend coming up with the whole thing.
While this book is not currently available new on Amazon, it *is* available (at least as of when I wrote this review) directly through the publisher, American Fantasy Press. Don't pay the exorbitant second-hand prices.
February 13, 2016
In this little book, Neil Gaiman and Gene Wolfe provide a helpful tourist's guide to the Shambles, a mysterious and terrifying neighbourhood in Chicago. The preface claims that the neighbourhood does not actually exist but I have reason to believe that they were bought off by the International Brotherhood of Meatworkers, a rather sinister organization mentioned several times throughout the guide but never explained in detail. The preface also claims that there is not a website at www.preserveusfromthehouseofclocks.com , but, as you can see, there is.
The guide is split into three main sections each exploring a street in the Shambles in detail, giving descriptions and histories of major landmarks, such as the House of Clocks; the Cereal House, which requires you to give next of kin before staying the night; and the historic house of serial killer H. H. Holmes. It also takes side trips to locations such as the ancient Chinese mausoleum under the city, in which you are advised to avoid any people with teeth longer than your own, and Saunder's Park, which contains the lovely Petting Zoo, a great place to bring children (preferably not your own), assuming you can avoid the crocodile that guards the entrance to the park.
The guide also gives helpful advice such as how to properly treat the Swandaliers who steer the swan boats (or "Swandolas") of Saunder's Park, or how to securely enter Gavagan's Irish Saloon (first remove $10 from your wallet, then mail your wallet to yourself, then hide the $10 in your right shoe).
Highly recommended.
The guide is split into three main sections each exploring a street in the Shambles in detail, giving descriptions and histories of major landmarks, such as the House of Clocks; the Cereal House, which requires you to give next of kin before staying the night; and the historic house of serial killer H. H. Holmes. It also takes side trips to locations such as the ancient Chinese mausoleum under the city, in which you are advised to avoid any people with teeth longer than your own, and Saunder's Park, which contains the lovely Petting Zoo, a great place to bring children (preferably not your own), assuming you can avoid the crocodile that guards the entrance to the park.
The guide also gives helpful advice such as how to properly treat the Swandaliers who steer the swan boats (or "Swandolas") of Saunder's Park, or how to securely enter Gavagan's Irish Saloon (first remove $10 from your wallet, then mail your wallet to yourself, then hide the $10 in your right shoe).
Highly recommended.
May 11, 2012
This is a very short book, and was actually co-written by Neil Gaiman and Gene Wolfe (whom Gaiman has often declared himself a fan of). It purports to be a walking tour of an area known as "The Shambles", which is a fictional neighborhood in Chicago (where Wolfe lives) and obviously is the site of some extremely strange history. Some of the locations include a really weird church, a house of clocks, and a house belonging to H.H. Holmes (America's first serial killer). All of which remain rather dangerous for the casual visitor.
This book is fun, and while not a long read is an easy recreational read, sure to please both Gaiman and Wolfe's fans.
This book is fun, and while not a long read is an easy recreational read, sure to please both Gaiman and Wolfe's fans.
May 1, 2011
Neil Gaiman and Gene Wolfe collaborate on this sightseeing guide to an imaginary Chicago neighborhood called the Shambles.
As one might expect, this neighborhood oozes with oddities and details gothic and supernatural, all related in a dry and highly humorously style. Very short, but likely to entertain fans of either author.
As one might expect, this neighborhood oozes with oddities and details gothic and supernatural, all related in a dry and highly humorously style. Very short, but likely to entertain fans of either author.
August 11, 2009
Well...
I'm not going to say it wasn't clever, but I will say it was rather dull. I probably wouldn't have finished it had it been much longer.
I'm not going to say it wasn't clever, but I will say it was rather dull. I probably wouldn't have finished it had it been much longer.
June 22, 2013
An absolutely delightful little time-saver! Would have completely missed the Swandoliers if not for this book.
June 6, 2021
I hadn’t heard of this book before I was given it but I’m a huge Neil Gaiman fan so I’ll read anything he writes. The cover led me to believe it was silly, and it did try to be that. I didn’t find much to laugh at though. Lots of weird tropes and childish scary story lines. It was just odd enough I made a mental connection between it and Welcome to Nightvale, which made me like it more by association. Short enough I can’t say it was a waste of time, just the unusual miss by Mr. Gaiman for me.
May 3, 2020
Kinda funny. Not really sure what the point of this is, but I'm being a completionist here.
June 28, 2020
A fun read and a nice addition to my Gene Wolfe collection.
January 23, 2015
This little book was the other Gaiman novelty I found while organizing a bookshelf over the weekend. Like Shoggoth's Old Peculiar, this book is short, not quite a novel, and is probably only for the hardest of hardcore Neil Gaiman fans, though special mention should be made that Gene Wolfe fans might also get a kick out of it. I say that because the prose seems to have been written by Wolfe more than Gaiman. I don't have a lot of experience reading Wolfe, but I do remember his style being drier than Gaiman's, and this book simply doesn't read like Gaiman's works.
The Shambles is a fictional area of Chicago that Gaiman and Wolfe dare to describe to us, with its questionable restaurants, strange houses, and eldritch atmosphere. Included in the area is a petting zoo that's great for children (so long as they're not your own), a clock museum (best visited right at the hour, and closes at six pm sharp), and a park that's a great place to relax (so long as the crocodile doesn't get involved). It doesn't include a map, unfortunately, but the descriptions of the attractions and sights in this three-block area of the city should be enough to shape out the region in your mind.
The book is very brief (57 pages), but entertaining enough. It would make a cute read for fans of either author, but I'm not sure there's enough here for casual readers to spend their time with. Regardless, it's a cute novelty that fits in well with the rest of my Neil Gaiman collection.
The Shambles is a fictional area of Chicago that Gaiman and Wolfe dare to describe to us, with its questionable restaurants, strange houses, and eldritch atmosphere. Included in the area is a petting zoo that's great for children (so long as they're not your own), a clock museum (best visited right at the hour, and closes at six pm sharp), and a park that's a great place to relax (so long as the crocodile doesn't get involved). It doesn't include a map, unfortunately, but the descriptions of the attractions and sights in this three-block area of the city should be enough to shape out the region in your mind.
The book is very brief (57 pages), but entertaining enough. It would make a cute read for fans of either author, but I'm not sure there's enough here for casual readers to spend their time with. Regardless, it's a cute novelty that fits in well with the rest of my Neil Gaiman collection.
February 10, 2012
I've read a lot of walking guides, often for places I've been to. But none has delighted me as much as this imaginative work of fiction, and oh, I so wish it was a real place I could visit! I read it over 3 nights, because it was so packed full of ideas and fun stuff, I didn't want to rush it. The illustrations are also highly evocative, and remind me of the old Fighting Fantasy illustrations from the 1980s. Indeed the whole book has some of that air about it: conjuring up images of a wonderful place that I wish I could go and explore. I can't recommend this highly enough. It's a slim book, just a chapbook really, but well worth reading if you like the weird, or historical, or strange, or just imaginative. And it is still in print, and available from the publishers direct.
January 8, 2009
This is a campy fictionalization of a walking tour guide of the shambles, a neighborhood in Chicago. In it there are a number of humorous horror elements detailing the various locales and some of the denizens of the area. One of my favorites was the Rent a Rifle at the top of the largest building where you would attempt to shoot sight seers of the sears building. Overall, I would probably say that this is one that most people could skip... but as it was written by two of my favorite authors it has been on my too read list for quite some time.
May 29, 2017
I do love Gaiman's work and enjoy real travel books. I wanted to like this one so much. And it was clever and cute. Even so, I tired of it quickly. Not my thing.
November 14, 2021
How did I not know about this book before? "A Walking Tour of the Shambles" was written by two of my favourite authors: Neil Gaiman and Gene Wolfe; and it is about Chicago - the city in which I have lived the past 7+ years.
I travel a lot and I buy a lot of guidebooks that contain suggested walking tours, pointing out sites along the walker's path and this looks very much like a real guidebook. It even has the number "16" in the corner, suggesting that there are others in this same series.
But there are no other guidebooks in this series. It is false. Nearly everything in this book is false. The Shambles is purported to be a neighborhood in Chicago, but no such neighborhood exists. And if it did, it would probably not contain a house full of murderous grandfather clocks; or man-eating crocodiles; or Cereal House, where you must provide the name of your next of kin before daring to spend the night.
Still, Gaiman and Wolfe did their homework. They recommend that tourists visit the home of H.H. Holmes; Holmes was a real person. He was a notorious serial killer who murdered dozens of Chicagoans in the late nineteenth century. But his house of horrors was in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood and has long since been demolished. Chicago does have a Canal Street, but it is clearly not the dangerous Canal Street described in this book.
The House of Clocks does not exist, but it does have its own website.
While not among their best works, this slim volume is fun and funny, and scary, and it made me smile. Those of us who are fans of Gaiman and Wolfe will enjoy it.
I travel a lot and I buy a lot of guidebooks that contain suggested walking tours, pointing out sites along the walker's path and this looks very much like a real guidebook. It even has the number "16" in the corner, suggesting that there are others in this same series.
But there are no other guidebooks in this series. It is false. Nearly everything in this book is false. The Shambles is purported to be a neighborhood in Chicago, but no such neighborhood exists. And if it did, it would probably not contain a house full of murderous grandfather clocks; or man-eating crocodiles; or Cereal House, where you must provide the name of your next of kin before daring to spend the night.
Still, Gaiman and Wolfe did their homework. They recommend that tourists visit the home of H.H. Holmes; Holmes was a real person. He was a notorious serial killer who murdered dozens of Chicagoans in the late nineteenth century. But his house of horrors was in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood and has long since been demolished. Chicago does have a Canal Street, but it is clearly not the dangerous Canal Street described in this book.
The House of Clocks does not exist, but it does have its own website.
While not among their best works, this slim volume is fun and funny, and scary, and it made me smile. Those of us who are fans of Gaiman and Wolfe will enjoy it.
Read
July 21, 2022Given their other work, you might have expected a Gaiman/Wolfe collaboration to be a grand gothic fantasy, but no, this is a helpful, if frequently unnerving, guidebook to a picturesque neighbourhood of Chicago, albeit one which either doesn't exist, or which it's better for everyone to pretend does not exist. Certainly I have never read another tourist guide which feels obliged to offer quite so many safety hints, nor such unnervingly specific ones, and I say that as someone who's still not entirely sure whether that guide to Budapest was pulling our leg as regards never clinking glasses or asking a local about buses. Nevertheless, as someone who for the past 20+ years has only felt comfortable living in areas which have Cthulhu Mythos stories written about them, there is a part of me which would love to investigate the 'attractions' of the Shambles, especially the ominous House of Clocks. More than anything, though, this is a record of great writers of two different generations but overlapping sensibilities having an absolute hoot doing their best to tickle each other, and we are lucky that we get to eavesdrop.
June 15, 2022
While this walking tour will cover a distance of only three city blocks, the compilers of this guide book suggest, based on our experience, that tourists and the curious be prepared to devote an entire day to it; there will be much to see and experience in your walk.
Well this is just a whole lot of silliness and fun from two greats. Taking an imagined walking tour of a non-existent block of Chicago, the guide describes the weird and wonderful inhabitants and the sights to behold within the three city blocks.
Full of laughs, the book as a whole is frustratingly short but I think that adds to it's ultimate charm. This is one to the treasured and read again. To be shared with friends and lovers of Neil Gaiman. 5 stars!
Well this is just a whole lot of silliness and fun from two greats. Taking an imagined walking tour of a non-existent block of Chicago, the guide describes the weird and wonderful inhabitants and the sights to behold within the three city blocks.
Full of laughs, the book as a whole is frustratingly short but I think that adds to it's ultimate charm. This is one to the treasured and read again. To be shared with friends and lovers of Neil Gaiman. 5 stars!
May 10, 2025
Honestly bought this because I was watching an old episode of Umm Actually episode that mentioned it. I've been a small fan of Gene Wolfe's for years and yet had never heard of this, so despite my distaste for Neil Gaiman given the current allegations I was too curious and couldn't pass up ordering this.
It's amusing, and I'm glad I read it. But I also can't imagine who in my life I'd ever recommend it to.
It's amusing, and I'm glad I read it. But I also can't imagine who in my life I'd ever recommend it to.
January 2, 2022
Quirky and delightful.
June 6, 2023
Fun little book by two of my favorite authors.
December 23, 2023
"Thus, we part, with one admonishment: Caveat lector, always and forever" (57).
June 10, 2009
A spoof of a tour guide of a fictional old part of Chicago. The Shambles were destroyed in the Great Fire of Chicago, what remains is largely beneath the surface of the city, so to speak. Gaiman and Wolfe team up for an entertaining read about "Chicago", full of tongue-in-cheek humor. The House of Clocks was especially interesting and even have their own website now based on the book (http://www.preserveusfromthehouseofcl...).
March 10, 2010
Oh man! This was wonderful. It's a walking tour guide through a fictional section of Chicago. Creepy and funny and lovely, it made me want to read and/or write several dozen more stories based on the tantalizing half-histories and untold tales mentioned. It's also tiny and took me about an hour to read. If you see it, pick it up. Neil Gaiman at his best and I really should probably read more Gene Wolfe, if this is any indication.
May 24, 2012
Thank god Chicago doesn't actually have a neighbourhood called the Shambles. They would probably end up "losing" too many tourists to the dangers of this off little set of streets. The fictional walkthrough is more than entertaining enough, and it definitely made me never ever want to see a place like this in real life. Legit crocodile in the pond and the strangest restaurant menu ever (boiled/grilled grapefruit, yuck)? No thanks!
June 10, 2015
3.5 stars. This is a tourist's walking guide to a fictional area of Chicago. It does weave in bits and pieces of real Chicago history and landmarks. The style is similar to a Welcome to Night Vale podcast, so if you are a fan of dark, dry humor, you will likely enjoy this. This came across my radar due to my affection for nearly all things Gaiman, and I was not disappointed. I do wish it had been a bit more substantial- 57 pages doesn't last long, but I did enjoy reading it.
March 26, 2009
I loved this and have to say thank you to the Eastern New Mexico University library for sending me their copy through inter-library loan. From their special collections, no less. This was a wonderful way to kill an hour reading (and I wished it was longer at several points). It gave me giggles that I only barely managed to suppress.
December 13, 2009
A hilarious parody of walking tour books for a neighborhood in Chicago that doesn't actually exist, and thank goodness it doesn't because it would be a horrifying place to live. There's something that will crack you up on almost every page, if not multiple times per page. Wonderfully done and entertaining, but it's something of a trifle.
April 28, 2011
A tour through a Chicago Gaimanesque weird neighborhood that doesn't exist. It's a pretty funny read in true Gaiman fashion, and since American Gods, I love how he takes the ordinary (House on the Rock) and makes it extraordinary. I dunno how much Wolfe contributed, as I've never read him before ... anyways, it's a zany romp.
July 9, 2016
An initially whimsical and spooky short, but then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, truly frightening and creepy.
I blame Gene Wolfe, but Neil Gaiman is not without blame.
And, much to my chagrin, that the series of writing warmup exercises I've been amusing myself with had already been done to perfection by Wolfe and Gaiman. Damn them!
I blame Gene Wolfe, but Neil Gaiman is not without blame.
And, much to my chagrin, that the series of writing warmup exercises I've been amusing myself with had already been done to perfection by Wolfe and Gaiman. Damn them!
December 8, 2008
This book is short, and wonderfully so. It stays just long enough to make you smile, but does not overstay its welcome and leaves you feeling very pleasant over the whole experience. Every sentence is meant to be read, and the individual words comprehended; don't skim this one.
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