Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys shares a great fantasy

Fat Charlie Nancy was a grown man stuck with a boy’s nickname that never lifted. When word of his eccentric father’s demise gets back to him, Charlie must travel to Florida to settle the estate. It is there that he not only learns that he had a brother named Spider, but that his father was an African trickster god called Anansi – hence the last name of Nancy. Charlie and Spider, the Anansi Boys, embark on an adventure that could only come from the imagination of author Neil Gaiman.

The plot of this novel has so many twists and turns that I won’t begin to outline them here. Most of the story is about the strange relationship between Fat Charlie and Spider. In one part, Charlie has a nightmare where he sees his father on a beach, and dad explains that if you cut a starfish in half it will give you two starfish. This sort of explains how Charlie and Spider came to be. Charlie is just a regular guy with no special powers, but Spider seems to have inherited much of his father’s godlike abilities. This is a big reason why Spider was never around while Charlie was growing up.

The story gets complicated when Spider becomes so interested in Charlie’s life that he decides to be Charlie. With a little bit of manipulation, Spider is able to make himself look and sound like Charlie to other people. He even goes to Charlie’s work and gets involved with his girlfriend. There’s a great subplot about Charlie’s evil boss and it takes them all on another adventure that involves visits to other worlds and intervention by more gods.

Neil Gaiman writes fantasy and science fiction stories, but not of the sword and sorcery or alien invasion kind. His novels create unique fantasy worlds full of colorful characters all described by his brilliant prose. His writing is truly a delight to read, and his stories are never unoriginal. He also tends to write on a PG-13 level where there is never an excessive amount of gory violence or profanity. Just like his last novel, American Gods, this novel made the New York Times bestseller list. It was published last September, and released on paperback earlier this month.

I thought Gaiman picked a funny title for this book. The pronunciation sounds like ‘Nancy Boys’, which is a slang term for homosexuals. Not what I expected from an author whose last name sounds like ‘Gay man’. This is just another example of the flair put into this wild story. Anansi are actually part of African folklore and inspired the famous ‘tar baby’ story from Uncle Remus. I did some research on Anansi and found where Gaiman got a lot of his inspiration to write this brilliant story.

While I did ultimately enjoy this story, I thought it took too long to get started. Everything eventually falls into place as the characters are developed, but some people might be thrown off by it. The fantasy elements don’t come into play until a good way’s into the story. As a Gaiman fan, I kept wondering when he was going to get to the twists. If you’ve never read Gaiman before, you might be pleasantly surprised when the story takes a turn towards fairy tale.

If you really want a treat, get the audiobook version of this story. It is said that great writing is even better when spoken aloud, and it’s true about this novel. British actor Lenny Henry gave an incredible performance in his reading, and he truly made each character unique. This is one of the best audiobook readings I’ve ever heard.

In short, Neil Gaiman has scored another hit with Anansi Boys.