Book: Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman


Great storyteller tells splendid story

Neil Gaiman
Anansi Boys
HarperCollins, 2005
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-051518-8
ISBN-10: 0-06-051518-X
$26.95
336 pages

Neil Gaiman is a very fine storyteller and in Anansi Boys, he tells splendid story.

In the book, Charles Nancy is a Londoner of Afro-Caribbean descent. He's an accountant for an performing-artists' agency and, if a black man can be a bit of a nebbish, he's a bit of a nebbish. He's engaged to a woman who doesn't seem to like him very much and whose mother likes him not at all. Early in the story, Charles's annoying and embarrassing father dies and he has to go to Florida for the funeral. What Fat Charlie (as his father nicknamed him) doesn't know is that his father was the incarnation of Anansi, an Afro-Caribbean spider-god who's a trickster and a storyteller. He also doesn't know that he has a brother who has magical powers.

When Fat Charlie's brother decides to move in with him (and brings his own room and scenery), things start to get complicated in Fat Charlie's previously tidy life. Trying to fix one set of problems creates another set, and the story moves along several different threads until Mr Gaiman brings them back together in a satisfying conclusion. Anyone who thinks that they might like a book like that will almost certainly like Anansi Boys.

Posted: Thu - November 16, 2006 at 05:56 PM   Main   Category: 

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