Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars An Entertaining and Light Confection of Gods, Ghosts, and Brothers "Fat Charlie" Nancy is an unambitious, self-conscious, London-based accountant who lets his fiance Rosie postpone sex till after their wedding and lets his future mother-in-law (who hates him) plan their wedding when, after attending the funeral of his estranged father Mr. Nancy in Florida, he learns not only that his father was the trickster story-telling spider god Anansi of West African and Caribbean mythology, but that he has a brother who received all of the god power in the family (hence Fat Charlie's middling life--he's not even really overweight). Back home in London, Fat Charlie gets drunk and, acting without belief on the advice of a family friend, sends a message to his brother via a spider. Almost immediately his brother, named Spider, shows up on Charlie's doorstep. Spider is an anti-Fat Charlie, using his godly powers of persuasion, instant travel, and the like to play the smooth operator and serial user and forgetter of people. Soon he's upset Fat Charlie's safe little life, making his brother regret his impulsive arachnid-call. Will Fat Charlie ever be able to marry Rosie, who seems smitten by Spider? Will he become the fall guy for his entertainment agency boss' cheating of clients? Will he ever again see Daisy Day, the free-spirited police detective he met after a night of wild wake activities led by Spider? Will he ever get rid of his brother? Will Fat Charlie's bargain with the Bird Woman be a minor or a major mistake? As Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys (2005) progresses, it answers such questions in an enjoyable, entertaining, and funny way (apart from a brutal murder), with numerous humorous asides, similes, references, and the like. It has some great imaginative scenes of fantasy, ranging from the nightmarish (the Bird Woman's scenes with Spider) to the sublime (the place at the start or end of everything where the animal-human gods dwell). Gaiman writes some vivid, comical descriptions, like of Fat Charlie suffering a hangover ("the kind . . . that an Old Testament God might have smitten the Midianites with") or Mrs. Dunwiddy stuffing a turkey with cornbread ("with a force that would have made the turkey's eyes water if it still had any"). He nails the voices and styles of the four elderly black Caribbean women who once loved Mr. Nancy and feel responsible for what happens to his sons. There's something similar (though much more limited) here to what Gaiman does in American Gods (2001) in introducing gods into our contemporary world, as well as some ghost stuff that doesn't seem to belong with the gods. I think Anansi Boys is lighter in mood and heft than the earlier novel, and the ending verges on being too tidy and corny, and I regret that we never learn how Anansi tricked Tiger out of all the stories in the world (unless I missed it somehow), but fans of Gaiman and fantasy set in contemporary urban settings should like the book. View all my reviews
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Jefferson Peters
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