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Gaiman turned his attention to African mythology and the figure of Anansi the spider god. Having already made a scene-stealing appearance in the award-winning American Gods , the irresistible Mr Nancy makes a triumphant return in this witty romp of a novel — perfect for fans of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. Now you merely have to do something just as beautiful and just as ground-breaking. Inside, fully illustrated, original black-and-white chapter headings tell their own folktale — all of which are especially fitting for a book about the power and vitality of stories. Spider was the cool one; he was the other one. Bereavement is a time of upheaval and for Fat Charlie Nancy the changes are practically seismic. Not only does he discover that his embarrassing old dad was actually Anansi the African trickster god, his life is about to be invaded and turned upside down by Spider, the magical twin brother he never knew he had. As well as helping to inspire the book, Lenny Henry provided advice and insight on Caribbean syntax and dialogue, helping to ensure that the voices of the characters sounded authentic. His work demonstrates exactly how wild and varied the field can be, from uprooting fairy tales in Stardust to exposing the fantastical underbelly of London in Neverwhere. Neil Gaiman is a critically acclaimed writer of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. Credited with being one of the creators of modern comics, Gaiman is an author whose work crosses many genres and reaches audiences of all ages. His most recent publication is Norse Mythology Nalo Hopkinson was born in Jamaica. She has published six novels and numerous short stories. She is currently a Professor of Creative Writing and part of a faculty research cluster in science fiction at the University of California Riverside. Butler Memorial Award, in recognition of impactful contributions to the world of science fiction, fantasy and speculative fiction. She is currently completing an alternative historical fantasy of the Caribbean. Francis Vallejo is an award-winning American artist. Philip Pullman. Illustrated by Peter Bailey. A magnificent Folio Society edition of a worldwide phenomenon. Neil Gaiman. Illustrated by Dave McKean. Terry Pratchett. Illustrated by Omar Rayyan. What happens to gods when their believers stop believing? Published in series with Mort , this edition of one of the most celebrated Discworld novels features brilliant illustrations by Omar Rayyan. Home Anansi Boys. His notable works include the Sandman graphic novel series, Stardust , Neverwhere , and Coraline. He learns his father has died in Florida. At the funeral, family friend Callyanne Higgler tells him a secret: his father was actually Anansi, the African trickster spider god. She also tells him he has a brother. She tells him if he wants to meet his brother, all he has to do is ask a spider. The next morning, his brother shows up. Spider proves himself irresistibly, perhaps magically, charming, drawing women to his side with ease as Fat Charlie watches. Everything in life seems to come easily to Spider. The next day, a hungover Fat Charlie wakes up with a strange woman, a cop named Daisy, in his bed. Fat Charlie tries to pass Daisy off as his cousin. Rosie believes him, but Mrs. Noah does not. Fat Charlie wakes up very late for work, but Spider has disguised himself as his brother and gone to work in his stead. After work, still disguised as Fat Charlie, Spider takes Rosie out. She believes he is a new and improved Fat Charlie. Though Rosie has told Fat Charlie she intends to stay a virgin until their marriage, she sleeps with Spider. Spider tells Coats he knows about the embezzlement. The next day, Fat Charlie shows up for work and Coats tells him to take a vacation. Coats begins to forge financial documents that will frame Fat Charlie for his crimes. He asks Mrs. Higgler for help, but she tells him their other neighbor, Mrs. Dunwiddy, would be better to ask. But the other gods, having all been tricked by Anansi at some point or another, bear a grudge. Tiger especially hates Anansi because Anansi owns all the stories in the world, which means he gets to control the nature of the world. Tiger, a predator, wants to own the stories and make the world a more tiger-like place. She is so disturbed by the news, she calls off their wedding. When she returns home, a pleased Mrs. Noah suggests they go on a cruise together to help her get over the breakup. When Charlie returns to England, he is arrested for embezzlement. Daisy is one of the officers who interrogate him but believes he is innocent. Meanwhile, Grahame Coats meets with a client, Maeve Livingston, who realizes he has been stealing money from her accounts. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, Paperback | Barnes & Noble®

Things like the tall, good-looking stranger who appears on Charlie's doorstep, who appears to be the brother he never knew. A brother as different from Charlie as night is from day, a brother who's going to show Charlie how to lighten up and have a little fun And all of a sudden, life starts getting very interesting for Fat Charlie. Because, you see, Charlie's dad wasn't just any dad. He was Anansi, a trickster god, the spider-god. Anansi is the spirit of rebellion, able to overturn the social order, create wealth out of thin air, and baffle the devil. Back at Charlie's house, he explains to Rosie that he really isn't Charlie, but Spider. Rosie is able to see who he truly is and wonders how she could ever think that he was Charlie. She asks if Charlie knew and Spider says yes. Rosie is so upset, disgusted, and confused that she calls off the wedding with Charlie and breaks up with Spider. She then goes home and tells her mother what happened. Charlie returns from England and again demands that Spider leave. Spider refuses once again and an argument begins. The argument ends when the police show up and arrest Charlie for embezzlement. Spider ges back to his room, but is attacked by flamingos. Spider then realizes that something is wrong and it has to do with Charlie. Daisy is the police officer who interrogates Charlie. She realizes that he is innocent and wants to prove it. Charlie realizes that birds are taking a special interest in him when hundreds if them settle on the fence surrounding the outdoor area of the prison. They just sit there an stare at Charlie. While this all happens. Graham Coats is visited by a client, Maeve Livingstone , who has figures out his embezzlement scam. Coats then kills her and stashes her body in the hidden room behind the bookcase in his office. Coats then assumes an alternate identity and fleas to the island of St. Andrews in the Carribean. The ghost of Maeve does not move on to the after life even when her husband begs he to through the phone and the television. She is determined to get revenge on Graham Coats. Spider teleports into the jail and breaks Charlie out. They teleport to many places, getting attakced by birds every place they go. Spider explains that the birds are after him and Charlie and Charlie confesses to the deal that he made with Bird. Charlie decides to call off the deal with Bird and asks spider to teleport them to Mrs. Higgler's house so that he can get the feather from Mrs. Spider explains that he can't teleport to Mrs. Higgler, but doesn't explain why very well. Spider returns Charlie to jail because that is the only place where the birds cannot get Charlie. Spider remains on his own to fend off the birds. Charlie informs Daisy of the hidden room in Coats's office. Once the police find the hidden room and the body of Maeve, Daisy is taken off the case since it is now considered a homicide case. The police believe that they can never convict Coats since he has gone to St. Daisy believes that everyone deserves justice and travels to St. Andrews to find Coats even though she is no longer on the case. Charlie is free to go. Charlie reunites with Spider and Spider realizes that they can't both get away from the birds. Spider sacrifices himself to the birds so that Charlie can hopefully call off the deal with Bird. The birds decend and carry Spider off to the Beginning of the World were Bird rips out his tongue and delivers him to Tiger. Spider uses the blood from his mouth and the dust of the ground to form a spider and sends that spider for help. Charlie travels back to Florida to Find Mrs. He goes to Mrs. Dunwiddy who is dying. Dunwiddy explains that Charlie used to be one boy, but the day that he broke her mirror ball, she split him into two boys, Charlie and Spider. Spider is the boy with all of the bad qualities and she banished him. That is why Spider couldn't teleport to to Florida because Mrs. Dunwiddy had banished him from there. Dunwiddy also explains that Mrs. Higgler moved back to her original home, St. Charlie then travels to St. Charlie rides a bike throughout the island, lookign for Mrs. He gets to the door of Coats, but Coats doesn't answer. Rosie and her mother's cruise stops on St. Andrew's for a day. They see Graham Coats there and he invites them back to his house. He believes that they are spies sent by Charlie and locks them in his meat locker, planning to kill them. Charlie runs into Daisy and they decide to have dinner together. Graham Coats shows up and threatens Daisy with a gun underneath the table. To get out of the situation, Charlie gets up and sings and then proposes marriage to Daisy. The staff overwhelms her and brings her up to the stage. Coats hurries out. Charlie sees Mrs. Maeve is contacted by her late husband, who advises her to move on to the afterlife, but she refuses in favour of taking vengeance on Grahame Coats. Later, she meets the ghost of Anansi himself, who recounts a story to her. Once, Anansi reveals, the animal god Tiger owned all stories, and as a result, all stories were dark, violent and unhappy. Anansi tricked Tiger into surrendering the ownership of stories to him, forever allowing stories to involve cleverness, skill and often humour rather than strength alone. After he is attacked by flamingoes , Spider realises that something Charlie did is causing these attacks and that he is in mortal peril. Consequently, Spider magically breaks Charlie out of prison. The two discuss matters in the course of fleeing from birds from around the world, realising that giving away Anansi's bloodline implicates Charlie as well as Spider. Charlie is then returned to prison and is eventually freed. He mentions a hidden room in Coats's office to the police, who find Maeve Livingstone's body there. Spider is swept away in a storm of birds, after which Bird Woman removes his tongue to prevent his use of magic. In spite of his helplessness, Spider manages to form a little spider out of clay, instructing it to go find help in the spider kingdom that Anansi and his descendants command. Despite not being as strong as Tiger, Spider still manages to fend him off for some time while Tiger prolongs killing him, preferring to savour his long hoped-for revenge on Anansi and his brood. Meanwhile Rosie and her mother have taken a consolation cruise to the Caribbean , where they unexpectedly meet Grahame Coats, who offers them a tour of his home. The two have not heard of the events in England and thus unsuspectingly walk into a trap at his home where they are locked in his basement. Charlie goes searching for Callyanne Higgler to help him solve his problems. He looks for her in Florida, but Anansi's old friends tell him that Mrs. Higgler has returned to the Caribbean country of Saint Andrews. These friends reveal to him that it was another old lady, Mrs. Dunwiddy, who was annoyed with the young Fat Charlie and made a spell to separate his good side from his bad side, which then became Spider, separating the one person into two. Fat Charlie finally finds her after a long search in Saint Andrews and is sent again, via seance, to the beginning of the world where he forces the Bird Woman to give back Anansi's bloodline in return for her feather. Meanwhile, Spider has managed to survive as an overconfident Tiger continues to prolong devouring him. When Tiger attempts a killing strike, a massive army of spider reinforcements summoned by Spider overwhelm him and force his retreat. At this point, Charlie rescues Spider and gives him back his tongue. Tiger now takes possession of Grahame Coats's body and uses his bloodlust to manipulate him, intending to get revenge on Spider by killing Rosie and her mother. The possession by Tiger, however, makes Grahame Coats vulnerable to attacks from other spirits and Maeve Livingstone, having found Grahame Coats with the aid of Anansi's ghost, eliminates Coats in the real world and, satisfied, moves on to her afterlife. Meanwhile, still at the beginning of the world, Charlie, having discovered his power to alter reality by singing a story, recounts the long tale of all that has gone before and humiliates Tiger to the point of retreating to his cave. Spider then collapses the cave entrance, sealing Tiger inside. Charlie weaves this event into his song, reinforcing it with his powers, such that Tiger is securely trapped. Coats, turned into a stoat , remains with Tiger as an unwelcome guest that can be perpetually eaten for eternity. In the end, Spider marries Rosie and becomes the owner of a restaurant. He is put constantly under pressure by Rosie's mother to have children, but possibly to annoy her never does. Charlie begins a successful career as a singer, marries police officer Daisy Day and has a son Marcus. Old Anansi, resting comfortably in his grave, watches his two sons approvingly as he contemplates resurrecting himself in 20 or 25 years. Despite garnering enough votes for a Hugo nomination, Gaiman declined it. It was broadcast on 17 November The original soundtrack was composed by Danish composer in residence Nicolai Abrahamsen. Gaiman stated that he was displeased with the BBC radio adaptation, because "budget cutbacks and less broadcasting time for drama [have caused BBC to decide] it would have to be an hour-long adaptation. And bad things happen when novels get cut down to an hour. So despite a really terrific cast and production and as solid a script as could be in the circumstances, I was not happy. It felt like one of those Readers' Digest condensed books". Anansi Boys Summary | GradeSaver

You will not be disappointed. Anansi Boys is a wonderful book by a versatile and entertaining author, Neil Gaiman. But this review is about the book's reader--Lenny Henry, who is an absolutely amazing performer. I've listened to a lot of audiobooks and some very good readers, but Lenny Henry is head and shoulders above all the rest--including Jim Dale. His characterizations--of both males and females--are so good that you forget the reader and only hear the character. In this book, he does Caribbean, American, and several British accents, all utterly convincing. He also differentiates the characters beautifully. I rarely listen to an audiobook twice. This one is an exception. Neil Gaiman's ability to entertain with the written word is nearly overwhelming at times. I have been putting off reading this book primarily because the narrator is not Neil Gaiman, and I have not listened to any of his books not read by him. And so glad I did. None of my previous experience with Gaiman prepared me for this story. Have not read American Gods yet. While still magical, the tone is vastly different from Neverwhere, Stardust, and my new favorite The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Tapping into African folk tales, Gaiman has woven a mythical mash-up of the living and the afterworld, humans and animals, reality and perception, and does it with huge splashes of humor that will have you laughing out loud in spite of yourself. I may even consider giving Kareoke a try. I loved that the lightness of tone survives and overcomes the dark goings-on as ancient mythical grudges seep into the present day lives of the Anansi brothers. My reservations about Lenny Henry as the reader were totally unfounded. His vocal agility successfully tackles every accent, age, gender, and even the animal kingdom. Since the source fables have been passed down through oral tradition, it is very appropriate to listen to this book rather than to read it. In print I suspect the impact would have been reduced by at least half. This is a story of life and love mixed with magic, myth, and mystery - a rare treat for me. Superb narration and perfectly paced delivery make this one much more special than just your run-of-the-mill fantasy selection. I particularly enjoyed the fables mixed into the story - even though I am terrified of spiders I found myself laughing and wanting more. This one is appropriate for young adults and those with lower thresholds for off-color humor or language - good clean fun :. I buy very very few audiobooks. I almost never listen to them more than once and why pay several times the paperback price for something you won't enjoy again and again?. It's much cheaper to simply borrow them from the library, listen to them, then return them. Win-win situation: I enjoy the book, and save anywhere from dollars by not purchasing the audio. Neil Gaiman is one of the finest writers out there and we have never been disappointed. Lenny Henry has been a favorite of ours since we became addicted to his TV series Chef! I have listened to it at least twice now and fully expect my whole family to enjoy it for years to come. The happy ending is never in doubt. I missed true fear or evil. Nice book, easy listen. I'd like to see more stories like this following different gods. Another good book from Neil Garmin. Lenny Henry does a great job. I really enjoyed the whole book, only drawback was the music between sections. It took a long time to get into this but it was enjoyable. Lenny Henry's narration is brilliant. Anansi Boys. Narrated by: Lenny Henry. Series: American Gods , Book 2. Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins. Add to Cart failed. Please try again later. Add to Wish List failed. Remove from wishlist failed. Adding to library failed. Please try again. Follow podcast failed. Unfollow podcast failed. Free with a day trial. Stream or download thousands of included titles. Anansi Boys By: Neil Gaiman. No default payment method selected. Add payment method. Switch payment method. We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method. Pay using card ending in. Taxes where applicable. Listeners also enjoyed Publisher's Summary God is dead. Meet the kids. What listeners say about Anansi Boys. Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews. Amazon Reviews. Sort by:. Most Helpful Most Recent. Filter by:. All stars 5 star only 4 star only 3 star only 2 star only 1 star only. Hawley Beautifully narrated I'm fairly new to audiobooks, and every purchase still feels like a bit of a gamble. John More narrow scope means better story American Gods is one of the best books I've heard on Audible, and I didn't expect Anansi Boys to live up to that. Thomas So much fun!! Amazon Customer Beautifully done Neil Gaimen produces yet another excellent book. Jeremiah Best Performance in an Audiobook Buy this audiobook! Best audiobook reader ever Anansi Boys is a wonderful book by a versatile and entertaining author, Neil Gaiman. Moses Janice Old myths and new fables I have been putting off reading this book primarily because the narrator is not Neil Gaiman, and I have not listened to any of his books not read by him. Kim Whimsical and Magical Fun This is a story of life and love mixed with magic, myth, and mystery - a rare treat for me. This one is appropriate for young adults and those with lower thresholds for off- color humor or language - good clean fun : 8 people found this helpful. Virginia Booklover Neil Gaiman and Lenny Henry can't be beat I buy very very few audiobooks. Show More. Jlo Anonymous User Lenny Henry makes jt good start. Malcolm Easy Listening Nice book, easy listen. It's recognizable Gaiman stuff, with the fish-out-of-water narrator in a modern fantasy world, with the author sxploring the history and the form of the mythic story, but there's a level of deprecating humor in this book that is lacking in other works by Gaiman. One can catch snips of wit in any of his books. Any good book must include some humor: an author might as futilely try to excise pain or desire from life as humor. Gaiman has never placed any such artificial limits on his work; indeed, the only limits on his books are those he, himself cannot overcome. Previously, his humor was only an occasional element, but there was apparently something in the writing of this particular book which finally allowed him to unleash his sense of the comic as a whole entity. The text swims and bobs with the ridiculous, the unfortunate, and the clever. After reading 'Good Omens', written by Gaiman and Prachett, I was told that without Prachett, it would have retained none of the humor. I now begin to wonder whether if Pratchett added anything at all. Indeed, this work of Gaiman's overshadows that earlier work in both degrees and shades of the insightful and entertaining. With the focus on Anansi and stories, the book provides an amusing analysis of storytelling itself, so that anyone who studies the nature and classification of tales will find certain asides and references particularly amusing. It is rare these days that an author will write a piece of fiction which explores on a subtextual level a concept or idea fundamental to the work itself. I have come to wish that more authors could gain the audacity that Gaiman found here. There is a degree to which this story matches Gaiman's usual monomythic progression from naive outsider to coy insider, which at the outset was my greatest difficulty with the work. The inevitability and redundancy of this trope makes me wish for Gaiman's more eccentric and perverse moments. However, I found in the clever and skilled text a story worth experiencing, and one which matches or exceeds Gaiman's other attempts in the modern fantasy genre. The story is not as epic or dire as Gaiman's tend to be, and without that there is a loss of urgency in the story. This is not really a deficiency, however, as the playful humor could not cohabitate comfortably with an ever-steepening plot curve. The work fits into Gaiman's usual mode, exploring the myths and psychologies that most interest him. It may lose some of his fans in that it is less dark and brooding, less hopeless, but this could hardly be counted a loss. Any reader who wants more of the same can re-read his old works. My Fantasy Book Suggestions View all 18 comments. A Digression and a Review: When I was a child who was much too prone to being serious for her own good, there was a catalpa tree in our backyard. Now, if you don't know what a catalpa tree is, it's worth a Google. Catalpas are beautiful and exotic, with giant leaves we used as "plates" to have fairy-like meals of mulberry and honeysuckle with mimosa blossoms as a bit of garnish , giant bean pods that hung down like sylvan fingers ready to ensnare an unsuspecting child, white orchid-like flowers A Digression and a Review: When I was a child who was much too prone to being serious for her own good, there was a catalpa tree in our backyard. Catalpas are beautiful and exotic, with giant leaves we used as "plates" to have fairy-like meals of mulberry and honeysuckle with mimosa blossoms as a bit of garnish , giant bean pods that hung down like sylvan fingers ready to ensnare an unsuspecting child, white orchid-like flowers that would shower down while we swung on the tire swing below. I would climb up and look down to the ground so far below, filled with delicious terror at how impossibly high I was. This tree seemed massive-- big enough to hold all of my dreams and wildest flights of fancy. It, to paraphrase Zora Neale Hurston, seemed to hold dawn and doom in its branches. As an adult, however, this tree that looms so gargantuan in my imaginary landscape seems small and shrunken, like a wizened grandparent, its limbs not so big, and I realize that, while I felt like I was climbing to the top of a skyscraper, I was barely 10 feet off the ground. I bring this up because this is the closest approximation I can make to the difference between reading as a child and reading as an adult. As a child, there was a magic in stories, and I'm not talking about pixie dust and wands although there was certainly some of that. There was a magic in not knowing or caring where a story was going. A magic to realizing why, hey, that main character is kind of like me. A magic to finding that you could read the same story over and over and over again and it would never get old and would never be the same story twice, not really. The colors were brighter. The emotions were palpable. There was nothing but possibility. And, yes, there's certainly still magic in the stories I read as an adult, but it's never quite the same, is it? I'm a little more jaded in that, as soon as I can predict where the story is going, I lose a little interest. There's a little more cynicism, a little more impatience with an "I've been here before" narrative, and a little more sadness in knowing that I can never immerse myself in adult stories with the same abandon as that 10 year old reading under the catalpa tree. Now, I bring this up to explain that this is why I love Neil Gaiman. Gaiman can, more so than any other author, create that childlike awe of story within the adult me without telling a children's story. It's a peculiar and wonderful literary alchemy, this ability to take the adult world, the "real" world, and transform it into a place where one can find the same charm, humor, unpredictability, and enchantment found in the best children's narratives. And Anansi Boys is such a book. Nancy, a rascal of a man with a wicked sense of humor, an eye for the ladies, and a knack for purposely embarrassing his introverted, sensitive son. When Mr. Nancy dies, the now grown-up, soon to be married, and tenuously employed Fat Charlie is relieved that his father can never humiliate him again; however he soon finds out that life is not going to settle into a mundane, predictable pattern for him. He learns that his father was Anansi, the trickster spider god of African folklore, and he learns that he has a brother, Spider, who inherited his father's mischievous spirit and magical abilities. It's not long before the reunion between the two brothers breaks out into a serious and frequently hilarious case of sibling rivalry, with Spider usurping Fat Charlie's apartment, girlfriend, and life, and Fat Charlie going to extreme lengths to rid himself of his demigod brother. Anansi Boys lacks the darkness of American Gods and is a much more whimsical, comedic read. Initially, this did cause a bit of a disconnect for me until I gave in to the story without trying to connect it with or hold it up to my expectations of American Gods. While following the adventures of Fat Charlie, I found myself laughing aloud and relishing each twist and turn in the story as well as looking forward to the humorous "in which" chapter titles. Gaiman's love of story is evident and, as we learn through his depiction of Anansi folktales, the stories we tell and the stories we live are important not just for entertainment, but for creating the world as it should be. And the world as it should be is something as close as possible to a catalpa tree as seen through the eyes of a child--a place where anything and everything is possible, because that's where real magic resides. Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder View all 14 comments. Jan 30, Miranda Reads rated it liked it Shelves: finer-books-club-reading-chall , audiobook. Fat Charlie his dad gave him the nickname it's a sore spot spent his entire life absolutely mortified by his dad. Of course, everyone's parents are embarrassing. It goes with the territory. The nature of parents is to embarrass merely by existing, just as it is the nature of children of a certain age to cringe with embarrassment Then his dad does the unthinkable - he had the nerve to die. Now Fat Charlie has to go back to America for the first time in years and midway through the funeral - Fat Charlie his dad gave him the nickname it's a sore spot spent his entire life absolutely mortified by his dad. Now Fat Charlie has to go back to America for the first time in years and midway through the funeral - he discovers something wholly unexpected and almost equally embarrassing - his dad was a God. Everybody going to be dead one day, just give them time. We follow Fat Charlie Anansi's son as he becomes immersed into the world of the Gods - from discovering primitive magic to his secret brother. His life is thrown into chaos - his fiancee leaves him, his brother swoops her up and Fat Charlie is set up to take the fall for a very terrible person. All the while, he has to deal with the fallout from his dad's embarrassing death. While this book takes place in the same world as American Gods - there is hardly any overlap. This could be read this one as a standalone. I was disappointed that my favorite characters Shadow and the new gods don't make an appearance. The plot progressed at a glacial pace but once it started ramping up, I was hooked - there were so many side plots that were masterfully interwoven. I did enjoy that Fat Charlie had more personality that Shadow from the first novel but I still preferred Shadow. Much of the charm and magical realism from the first book didn't have as much of an impact as it did before - perhaps because of the limited characters. My absolute fave character? Fat Charlie's fiance's mother - she was such a bitter, shriveled prune I loved it! Apr 15, Fabian rated it it was amazing. It's adorably Beetlejuician! What's not to like, huh? View all 6 comments. Well, this felt a bit like a spider getting drunk while reading a history of literary genres, and then spinning a thread and getting all tangled up in the different genres himself while trying to make sense of the pattern he created. The web is a fable posing as a detective story posing as an embarrassing coming of age and heartbreak story mixed with fantasy and crime, put in a treasure chest and shipped off to the pirates of the Caribbean, where it decides to change shape and take a chapter's Well, this felt a bit like a spider getting drunk while reading a history of literary genres, and then spinning a thread and getting all tangled up in the different genres himself while trying to make sense of the pattern he created. The web is a fable posing as a detective story posing as an embarrassing coming of age and heartbreak story mixed with fantasy and crime, put in a treasure chest and shipped off to the pirates of the Caribbean, where it decides to change shape and take a chapter's break in the realm of spooky ghost stories, before wrapping up as a social satire on the nature of love and happiness. To be fair, the author added the most accurate and funny description of a monstrous hangover I have ever read, and while letting the reader look like a question mark most of the time, he also makes several of the reader's days by creating laughing-out-loud moments of nonsensical, witty humour in the middle of a comedy which could have the subtitle "the tragedy of the human condition". Bowing to Sartre's existentialism, he also creates a mini-hell of his preferred definition: "l'enfer, c'est les autres", and instead of eternally grilling humans in their frustrating interaction in the closed-off hell-cave, he lets a dark and mean and dumb-as-a-brick brutal god go bonkers whenever a tiny ex-human says something annoyingly irritating. Killing it off is a meaningless feat, of course, as it plays the honorable part of Prometheus' liver in this firework of storytelling: "Stories are like spiders, with all they long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look pretty when you see them under a leaf in the morning dew, and in the elegant way that they connect to one another, each to each. Neil Gaiman is the god of storytellers - which might well be a curse in his universe, as gods are constantly in trouble for having too much imagination and too little impulse control. They're a perfect mirror of their creators, obviously. Wonderful, spidery, funny, - beyond the realm of descriptive adjectives! Aug 29, Apatt rated it it was amazing Shelves: fantasy-top20 , favorites. Nancy so the two books are related but there is no need to read one to follow the other. The other is called Spider who is a god and can do magic. It was not that he was feckless, more that he had simply not been around the day they handed out feck. He does all this by impersonating Charlie without even bothering to look like him; he is just amazingly persuasive. It leads to a bird goddess sending massive flocks of multi-species birds after them, and a tiger-god coming after their blood for the alleged sins of their father. It is not as complex or nuanced as American Gods but, for my money, it is more fun. As always, Gaiman is overflowing with ideas and his prose tend to have a light, whimsical touch that often made me laugh out loud even. Anansi Boys is not objectively better than American Gods , which is indeed great, but I personally enjoy it more and it is my favorite Gaiman book. Thank you Raven for the link. There are several comical witches in this book. This led him to write his own movie screenplay. Hopefully there will be a movie one day. They demand a lot of you. The nature of parents is to embarrass merely by existing , just as it is the nature of children of a certain age to cringe with embarrassment , shame , and mortification should their parents so much as speak to them on the street. Oct 10, Maggie Stiefvater rated it it was amazing Shelves: recommended. This book is fast. This book is fun. This book is what it says it is. Which is fun. This book is a good, fast, fun read. I'm just not sure it's going to get any better than that. The only other thing I can say is that I immediately went out and bought another copy to give away to a friend, so that should stand for something, surely. View 1 comment. Jul 26, Jason Koivu rated it liked it. Anansi Boys is like a rollercoaster without the loops, very few twists and one that keeps the speed to a minimum. You strap yourself in, ready for excitement that never materializes. My god, I've never felt more luke warm towards a book in my life. The mildly interesting story is of a somewhat relatable modern day slacker coming to grips with his father's and brother's overwhelming personalities as well as a fantasy world he didn't know existed. I'm tired of stories with modern day slackers brin Anansi Boys is like a rollercoaster without the loops, very few twists and one that keeps the speed to a minimum. I'm tired of stories with modern day slackers bringing their pessimistic cynicisms to a world filled with fantastical lore. It's a fourth wall breaker and it's been done to death. I won't say Gaiman has taken the myth, mystery and intrigue completely out of this Caribbean mythology. He has however married it with a modern sensibility that claps a ball and chain about its ankle. At least with other books of his he can be given the credit of imaginary inventiveness. Anansi Boys doesn't even have that going for it. View all 17 comments. Nov 17, Shannon rated it really liked it Shelves: fantasy-scifi , audio-book , owned , my-very-best-reads , books-reviewed. ANANSI BOYS hereinafter AB is the archetype tale of the hero's quest but in place of the typical warrior hero is a fool, and, oh, it happens to take place in our days and there is the wonder of something magical yet not totally seen. Our fool of a hero is Fat Charlie. He used to be chubby as a kid but now he's in good enough shape yet everyone remembers him as Fat Charlie so the name sticks, much to his chagrin, and, it's all the fault of his father. Wait, did I tell you his father is a trickste ANANSI BOYS hereinafter AB is the archetype tale of the hero's quest but in place of the typical warrior hero is a fool, and, oh, it happens to take place in our days and there is the wonder of something magical yet not totally seen. Wait, did I tell you his father is a trickster African God? That makes it even harder on Fat Charlie because he's not dealing just with a mortal father but a father who is an African God and who can usually persuade people to do almost anything and make them usually laugh over it. At one point, back in the day, when Fat Charlie was a kid, his father tricked him into dressing like President Taft on President's Day and told him everyone else would be dressed that way, too. Well, they were not and Fat Charlie was belittled to tears by the other kids and his father thought it was all amusing. Now, don't start thinking Fat Charlie's father is overly cruel because there are other stories that favor him doing kind things for his son. Did I mention this father, known as Anansi, by the way, has two sons? Fat Charlie is the mortal one and this other son, known as Spider, is the one with all the powers. After Anansi appears to bite it while singing karaoke something Fat Charlie could never do there's a big funeral and a series of steps in the story lead to the two brothers linking up for the first time. Spider finally meets Fat Charlie, who lives in London but who grew up in Florida, and Spider decides he wants to live with Fat Charlie for a while. It turns out that Spider likes Fat Charlie's lifestyle so much that he steals his fiance and takes over his job while Fat Charlie goes off to talk to some witches four old ladies living in a suburb to have Spider banished. In doing so, he goes to another dimension where life first began and makes a deal with Bird Woman who has a grudge against Fat Charlie's family. What then takes place is a situation where a mortal and his demigod brother are attacked from several different fronts by this immortal, godlike Bird Woman. Oh, and Fat Charlie gets it for another girl but has to rescue his old fiance and her mother from another superpower in the Bahamas where he learns what it means to be a hero, even if he is truly the archetype fool. Overall, a superb urban fantasy with overlapping themes of coming of age, Pandora's Box, the twists and turns of life and how we all have family members we really want to get away from. And, on a far deeper level, one could also say this is about being human, even around the face immortal Gods. View all 9 comments. Mar 25, Brad rated it it was ok Shelves: fantasy. I love Neil Gaiman 's Sandman so much that I am desperate to love the rest of his work, but I can't do much more than like it because it's mostly only okay. He deals with all the stuff I love -- mythology, the occult, death, dreams, the urban fantastic - - but he's too tongue-in-cheek. Too clever, too hip and too cool for his own good. It's not that I don't like his prose work. And I even love some of it like W I love Neil Gaiman 's Sandman so much that I am desperate to love the rest of his work, but I can't do much more than like it because it's mostly only okay. And I even love some of it like Wolves in the Walls , if that counts, and Stardust , but when I get to what should be the meat of his oeuvre, American Gods and its sequel, i can't help feeling let down. It's not that I don't like his characters. Nancy, Spider and Fat Charlie are pretty groovy; the book reads fast and is entertaining; I even dig the ending, but somehow none of that is enough. I want more from Neil. I want to be dazzled, and he teases me with bedazzlement constantly, but I've only been dazzled by Dreams -- nothing else has come close. And maybe that's my problem right there: having found Gaiman through Sandman, everything that's followed pales in comparison. I am always looking for greatness, and all I get is pretty good. So if you read this review, Neil, just know that I love you, and I will always read you, and I am constantly looking for that drug-like hit I had the first time I bought a Sandman comic and yes I am that old and was blown away by your storytelling. You are a victim of your own best work. Please, please, please blow me away again. View all 11 comments. Dec 20, Madeline rated it it was amazing Shelves: all-time-favorites , fantasy. It's remarkable, really, how long I was permitted to exist without reading Neil Gaiman. In retrospect, I suppose it's a good thing that I didn't read any of his books until college - had I been exposed to his work in high school, the result would have been a near-obsession filled with pages of awful fanfiction and an emotional meltdown when I learned that Mr. Gaiman is happily married. But this didn't happen, thankfully. My first Neil Gaiman book was American Gods , and when my roommate a much m It's remarkable, really, how long I was permitted to exist without reading Neil Gaiman. My first Neil Gaiman book was American Gods , and when my roommate a much more dedicated fan than me recommended it, she added that although the book was good, Anansi Boys was better. I started reading this one with some trepidation, as I was convinced that nothing could ever be as good as American Gods , but to my delight, I was proven wrong. Sometimes, you read a book and know you're going to love it by the end of the first chapter. Sometimes you know after the first paragraph. With Anansi Boys , I knew at the dedication. It goes like this: "You know how it is. You pick up a book, flip to the dedication, and find that, once again, the author has dedicated the book to someone else and not to you. Not this time. This one's for you. With you know what, and you probably know why. Ok, I'm back. Anyway, what I really liked about this book was it just focused on a small group of people. American Gods , this book's predecessor-but-not-exactly-prequel, was a sprawling epic with tons of characters and rules and the fate of the entire world and then some depended on the ending coming off right. Anansi Boys takes that same world, one in which the gods are still alive and living among us, and zeroes in on just a couple of characters: the trickster god Anansi's two adult sons, one of whom has grown up knowing his father is a god, the other who is unaware of this. The stakes are still high, of course, and battles must be fought before the end, but the scope of the novel wasn't as expansive and exhausting as American Gods. You don't necessarily have to read one before the other, but it certainly couldn't hurt. I forgot to mark the good passages in my copy, so here are three random excerpts from the pages I remember off the top of my head: "Like all sentient beings, Fat Charlie had a weirdness quotient. For some days the needle had been over in the red, occasionally banging jerkily against the pin. Now the meter broke. From this moment on, he suspected, nothing would surprise him. He could no longer be outweirded. He was done. He was wrong, of course. He had nothing to write on, and felt that a definite measure of how well one was getting on in life was not having to hide things in one's bottom. Nothing happened. Nothing continued to happen. More Nothing. The Return of Nothing. Son of Nothing. Nothing Rides Again. Nothing and Abbott and Costello meet the Wolfman. Does that change anything? People respond to the stories. They tell them themselves. The stories spread, and as people tell them, the stories change the tellers. Because now the folks who never had any thought in their head but how to run from lions and keep far enough away from rivers that the crocodiles don't get an easy meal, now they're starting to dream about a whole new place to live. The world may be the same, but the wallpaper's changed. Apr 21, Ashley Daviau rated it it was amazing. I enjoyed this book WAY more my second time reading it. The first time I read it I went into it thinking it was a continuation of American Gods and it most definitely is not that so I was a little let down. But this time I knew what I was getting into and I was able to fully appreciate the spectacular story that Anansi Boys actually is! I thought the plot was incredibly interesting and I loved learning more about Anansi and his background. You get little glimpses in American Gods but this was so much more in depth! I also really loved Fat Charlie and Spider, their dynamic was so interesting and the trouble that Spider causes made cringe at times and laugh out loud at others. And after you find out the truth at the end, it kind of blows your mind! I definitely didn't see that coming and it literally made my jaw drop! I thought the ending was quite perfect, it didn't play out how I thought it would but after finishing it, I couldn't imagine a better ending. View 2 comments. I wouldn't call her weird, but I would definitely not call her normal. Her daughters reb "Stories are like spiders, with all their long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look so pretty when you see the under a leaf in the morning dew, and in the elegant way that they connect to one another, each to each. Her daughters rebelled against their mother's so-called weirdness by being some of the most charming, yet unrelentingly normal humans I've ever met. Normal hair, normal clothes, normal academic pursuits, normal jobs, normal boyfriends Sometimes, Kelly isn't sure where they picked up that eerie normality I thought about them as I re-read "Anansi Boys"; Fat Charlie is exactly like Kelly's girls, cringing at his father's eccentricities and strangeness, and doing his very best to blend in as much as he can. He hasn't seen or spoken to his father in years, and that's just fine by him. Until he learns that his father passed in an appropriately embarrassing way and attends the funeral only to learn that he has a mysterious brother he doesn't remember. And then that brother comes to pay him a visit This is an unusual Gaiman novel: it feels like a slightly different voice than the one regular readers might be used to. It is also much more deliberately funny than other Gaiman books: his weird and wonderful British humor always shines through in his work, but it usually feels more accidental. Here, he wants you to laugh, he's trying to set you up for a chuckle at every page. And that's part of my problem with this book: this attempt at being humorous feels strained. Neil doesn't need to try, he should really just let it happen on it's own The other element that makes this book not as stellar as other Gaiman books is the characters. I just didn't particularly enjoy any of them, and felt them all to be under-developed. Spider is a total dick, I simply don't get why Fat Charlie wants to marry a super-boring cold-fish like Rosie and Fat Charlie himself just takes so long to get his shit together Even the bad guy lacks panache I think I wanted more Anansi, more of his zaniness, more over-the-top; and the way the characters were drawn up just felt lukewarm. Don't get me wrong: this is not a bad book. I don't think Neil Gaiman has it in him to write a bad book. But it definitely doesn't have the same caliber as some of his other works. Jan 27, Emory's Defunct Profile rated it did not like it Shelves: reviewed. Gaiman has the same problem as Terry Pratchet. He can present the material, but he can't make me care. It's not a good sign when you're halfway through a book and you realize that if you put down the book and walked away right then and there, and never found out how the book ended, you wouldn't care. I don't care whether things work out between him and Rosie. I don't care if his dad is still alive or not. I don't care if he and his brother ever make up. I wouldn't care if the author ended th Mr. I wouldn't care if the author ended the book with 'then a bomb exploded and they all died the end'. I am unable to get interested in any of the characters or the plot. And the book was supposed to be funny, but most of the jokes just made it seem like he was trying way too hard. I've had this problem with all of Gaiman's books. I guess it just not my thing. They don't mean a damn unless there's people listenin' to them. Time to transfer back into my normal wrinkles and be a grown up. The book was good. Not great. But it was playful. I can see how many of my friends would love it. Many of my friends DO love it. It is a song and dance about family, brothers, myths, stories. It just fell a bit flat with me. Perhaps, like someone who has grown too old to see fairies or see magic, I'm just through a certain veil where Gaiman's prose works, but I KNOW -- I'm not feeling him the same way some are. I hear the words. I just don't want to sing and dance. Firmly in my forties, I feel almost obligated to keep reading Gaiman books even though they are past, for me, their expiration date.

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman | Audiobook |

Noah does not. Fat Charlie wakes up very late for work, but Spider has disguised himself as his brother and gone to work in his stead. After work, still disguised as Fat Charlie, Spider takes Rosie out. She believes he is a new and improved Fat Charlie. Though Rosie has told Fat Charlie she intends to stay a virgin until their marriage, she sleeps with Spider. Spider tells Coats he knows about the embezzlement. The next day, Fat Charlie shows up for work and Coats tells him to take a vacation. Coats begins to forge financial documents that will frame Fat Charlie for his crimes. He asks Mrs. Higgler for help, but she tells him their other neighbor, Mrs. Dunwiddy, would be better to ask. But the other gods, having all been tricked by Anansi at some point or another, bear a grudge. Tiger especially hates Anansi because Anansi owns all the stories in the world, which means he gets to control the nature of the world. Tiger, a predator, wants to own the stories and make the world a more tiger-like place. She is so disturbed by the news, she calls off their wedding. When she returns home, a pleased Mrs. Noah suggests they go on a cruise together to help her get over the breakup. When Charlie returns to England, he is arrested for embezzlement. Daisy is one of the officers who interrogate him but believes he is innocent. Meanwhile, Grahame Coats meets with a client, Maeve Livingston, who realizes he has been stealing money from her accounts. When she tells him what she knows, he kills her and hides her body in his office. View all 9 comments. Mar 25, Brad rated it it was ok Shelves: fantasy. I love Neil Gaiman 's Sandman so much that I am desperate to love the rest of his work, but I can't do much more than like it because it's mostly only okay. He deals with all the stuff I love -- mythology, the occult, death, dreams, the urban fantastic -- but he's too tongue-in-cheek. Too clever, too hip and too cool for his own good. It's not that I don't like his prose work. And I even love some of it like W I love Neil Gaiman 's Sandman so much that I am desperate to love the rest of his work, but I can't do much more than like it because it's mostly only okay. And I even love some of it like Wolves in the Walls , if that counts, and Stardust , but when I get to what should be the meat of his oeuvre, American Gods and its sequel, i can't help feeling let down. It's not that I don't like his characters. Nancy, Spider and Fat Charlie are pretty groovy; the book reads fast and is entertaining; I even dig the ending, but somehow none of that is enough. I want more from Neil. I want to be dazzled, and he teases me with bedazzlement constantly, but I've only been dazzled by Dreams -- nothing else has come close. And maybe that's my problem right there: having found Gaiman through Sandman, everything that's followed pales in comparison. I am always looking for greatness, and all I get is pretty good. So if you read this review, Neil, just know that I love you, and I will always read you, and I am constantly looking for that drug-like hit I had the first time I bought a Sandman comic and yes I am that old and was blown away by your storytelling. You are a victim of your own best work. Please, please, please blow me away again. View all 11 comments. Dec 20, Madeline rated it it was amazing Shelves: all-time-favorites , fantasy. It's remarkable, really, how long I was permitted to exist without reading Neil Gaiman. In retrospect, I suppose it's a good thing that I didn't read any of his books until college - had I been exposed to his work in high school, the result would have been a near-obsession filled with pages of awful fanfiction and an emotional meltdown when I learned that Mr. Gaiman is happily married. But this didn't happen, thankfully. My first Neil Gaiman book was American Gods , and when my roommate a much m It's remarkable, really, how long I was permitted to exist without reading Neil Gaiman. My first Neil Gaiman book was American Gods , and when my roommate a much more dedicated fan than me recommended it, she added that although the book was good, Anansi Boys was better. I started reading this one with some trepidation, as I was convinced that nothing could ever be as good as American Gods , but to my delight, I was proven wrong. Sometimes, you read a book and know you're going to love it by the end of the first chapter. Sometimes you know after the first paragraph. With Anansi Boys , I knew at the dedication. It goes like this: "You know how it is. You pick up a book, flip to the dedication, and find that, once again, the author has dedicated the book to someone else and not to you. Not this time. This one's for you. With you know what, and you probably know why. Ok, I'm back. Anyway, what I really liked about this book was it just focused on a small group of people. American Gods , this book's predecessor-but-not-exactly-prequel, was a sprawling epic with tons of characters and rules and the fate of the entire world and then some depended on the ending coming off right. Anansi Boys takes that same world, one in which the gods are still alive and living among us, and zeroes in on just a couple of characters: the trickster god Anansi's two adult sons, one of whom has grown up knowing his father is a god, the other who is unaware of this. The stakes are still high, of course, and battles must be fought before the end, but the scope of the novel wasn't as expansive and exhausting as American Gods. You don't necessarily have to read one before the other, but it certainly couldn't hurt. I forgot to mark the good passages in my copy, so here are three random excerpts from the pages I remember off the top of my head: "Like all sentient beings, Fat Charlie had a weirdness quotient. For some days the needle had been over in the red, occasionally banging jerkily against the pin. Now the meter broke. From this moment on, he suspected, nothing would surprise him. He could no longer be outweirded. He was done. He was wrong, of course. He had nothing to write on, and felt that a definite measure of how well one was getting on in life was not having to hide things in one's bottom. Nothing happened. Nothing continued to happen. More Nothing. The Return of Nothing. Son of Nothing. Nothing Rides Again. Nothing and Abbott and Costello meet the Wolfman. Does that change anything? People respond to the stories. They tell them themselves. The stories spread, and as people tell them, the stories change the tellers. Because now the folks who never had any thought in their head but how to run from lions and keep far enough away from rivers that the crocodiles don't get an easy meal, now they're starting to dream about a whole new place to live. The world may be the same, but the wallpaper's changed. Apr 21, Ashley Daviau rated it it was amazing. I enjoyed this book WAY more my second time reading it. The first time I read it I went into it thinking it was a continuation of American Gods and it most definitely is not that so I was a little let down. But this time I knew what I was getting into and I was able to fully appreciate the spectacular story that Anansi Boys actually is! I thought the plot was incredibly interesting and I loved learning more about Anansi and his background. You get little glimpses in American Gods but this was so much more in depth! I also really loved Fat Charlie and Spider, their dynamic was so interesting and the trouble that Spider causes made cringe at times and laugh out loud at others. And after you find out the truth at the end, it kind of blows your mind! I definitely didn't see that coming and it literally made my jaw drop! I thought the ending was quite perfect, it didn't play out how I thought it would but after finishing it, I couldn't imagine a better ending. View 2 comments. I wouldn't call her weird, but I would definitely not call her normal. Her daughters reb "Stories are like spiders, with all their long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look so pretty when you see the under a leaf in the morning dew, and in the elegant way that they connect to one another, each to each. Her daughters rebelled against their mother's so-called weirdness by being some of the most charming, yet unrelentingly normal humans I've ever met. Normal hair, normal clothes, normal academic pursuits, normal jobs, normal boyfriends Sometimes, Kelly isn't sure where they picked up that eerie normality I thought about them as I re-read "Anansi Boys"; Fat Charlie is exactly like Kelly's girls, cringing at his father's eccentricities and strangeness, and doing his very best to blend in as much as he can. He hasn't seen or spoken to his father in years, and that's just fine by him. Until he learns that his father passed in an appropriately embarrassing way and attends the funeral only to learn that he has a mysterious brother he doesn't remember. And then that brother comes to pay him a visit This is an unusual Gaiman novel: it feels like a slightly different voice than the one regular readers might be used to. It is also much more deliberately funny than other Gaiman books: his weird and wonderful British humor always shines through in his work, but it usually feels more accidental. Here, he wants you to laugh, he's trying to set you up for a chuckle at every page. And that's part of my problem with this book: this attempt at being humorous feels strained. Neil doesn't need to try, he should really just let it happen on it's own The other element that makes this book not as stellar as other Gaiman books is the characters. I just didn't particularly enjoy any of them, and felt them all to be under-developed. Spider is a total dick, I simply don't get why Fat Charlie wants to marry a super-boring cold- fish like Rosie and Fat Charlie himself just takes so long to get his shit together Even the bad guy lacks panache I think I wanted more Anansi, more of his zaniness, more over-the-top; and the way the characters were drawn up just felt lukewarm. Don't get me wrong: this is not a bad book. I don't think Neil Gaiman has it in him to write a bad book. But it definitely doesn't have the same caliber as some of his other works. Jan 27, Emory's Defunct Profile rated it did not like it Shelves: reviewed. Gaiman has the same problem as Terry Pratchet. He can present the material, but he can't make me care. It's not a good sign when you're halfway through a book and you realize that if you put down the book and walked away right then and there, and never found out how the book ended, you wouldn't care. I don't care whether things work out between him and Rosie. I don't care if his dad is still alive or not. I don't care if he and his brother ever make up. I wouldn't care if the author ended th Mr. I wouldn't care if the author ended the book with 'then a bomb exploded and they all died the end'. I am unable to get interested in any of the characters or the plot. And the book was supposed to be funny, but most of the jokes just made it seem like he was trying way too hard. I've had this problem with all of Gaiman's books. I guess it just not my thing. They don't mean a damn unless there's people listenin' to them. Time to transfer back into my normal wrinkles and be a grown up. The book was good. Not great. But it was playful. I can see how many of my friends would love it. Many of my friends DO love it. It is a song and dance about family, brothers, myths, stories. It just fell a bit flat with me. Perhaps, like someone who has grown too old to see fairies or see magic, I'm just through a certain veil where Gaiman's prose works, but I KNOW -- I'm not feeling him the same way some are. I hear the words. I just don't want to sing and dance. Firmly in my forties, I feel almost obligated to keep reading Gaiman books even though they are past, for me, their expiration date. The magic is fading. But something still pulls me back in. They are the Lays Potato Chips of science fiction. Perhaps, but perhaps it is just that I'm not directly Gaiman's fanbase anymore. He isn't writing exactly for me and I know it. I feel it. But still, every few seasons -- I unavoidably -- reach into the greasy Gaiman bag for another book. I miss the song. I miss the dance. So, periodically, I open his books and try and recreate those first few pages, the first few times. I try to put my youth and magic back into a bottle, but I don't have the focus or the patience. Aug 15, Stephen rated it really liked it Shelves: award-winner-mythopoeic-fantasy , sfsite-reader-s-poll-winner , audiobook , mythstories-and-legends , award-winner-british-fantasy , , award- nominee-locus , award-nominee-british-fantasy , award-winner-locus , award-nominee-mythopoeic-fantasy. Another superb story by one of my favorite authors. While not a sequel to his superb American Gods , it shares the title character with that book along with some references to his adventures in that story. While those references add to the richness of the tale, there is no necessity of reading American God first except for the obvious one that it is one of the best books ever. Anyway, this story center around Charles "Fat Charlie" Nancy, a timid, passive man from London whose 4. Anyway, this story center around Charles "Fat Charlie" Nancy, a timid, passive man from London whose life is turned upside down when his very flamboyant father dies. Charlie soon discovers that his father was actually an incarnation of "Anansi" the West African trickster god whose primary form is that of a spider. Things go from bad to worse when Charlie meets his previously unknown older brother, Spider. Spider proceeds to turn Charlie's previously dull existence upside down through a series of events that I won't spoil here except to say that, in typical Neil Gaiman fashion, they meet a plethora of incredibly unique and intersting characters during the course of the narrative. Neil Gaiman is an incredible story teller and this book is another great one. Highly Recommended!! Oct 03, J. Grice rated it liked it Shelves: dark-fantasy. A pretty decent read, but nothing terribly special. It's one of those books I had no problem finishing, but I would definitely not read it again. Apr 16, Robin Bridge Four rated it it was ok Shelves: reads , ghosts , witches-warlocks-and-magic , uf-pnr. But it seemed silly to read almost all of a book and not finish. But I finished and while I did enjoy the beginning of the book except for in one chapter I think it used the term Fat Charlie times , I liked the end of the book even if it took awhile to pull it all together. What was muddled is some of the stuff in the middle. However, I did like learning how Anasi stories are like the ones that Disney told in Song of the South about a very clever rabbit that gets the better of those around him using trickery. But I've read just enough good work by him to keep me coming back, hoping to strike gold again. Unfortunately, all I found here was fool's gold. Maybe that sounds harsh, considering the story was very imaginative, rich in details stemming from a myth originating in an African folktale. But here's why I think this book glitters only on the surface. The character from the abo 2. The character from the above folktale takes the form of a spider and is the spirit of all knowledge of stories. This spider--Anansi--often takes the form of a man, and that's where this book begins, with the death of Mr. Nancy, a seemingly carefree and crafty fellow. He has a son he referred to as Fat Charlie, even though Charlie had only been a bit plump for a few years before adolescence. Nancy dies, Charlie discovers his father was the god, Anansi, whose powers were inherited by his son--not Charlie, though, but Charlie's brother, Spider, whom Charlie never knew existed. With the help of some magic, Charlie wishes to meet the brother he never knew, which is a case of being "careful what you wish for" as chaos ensues. So far so good, with what seemed like a family drama rich in myth with magic unfolding. But despite an explanation for his behavior given later, Charlie was a bit too wimpy for a main character whom I'm supposed to root for. And to make matters worse, this is about all the character development Charlie or any other characters get as this story turns into a mish mash when combining a family drama with a crime story on top of multiple fantasy elements. With so much going on, instead of the story racing forward, it crawled sideways like a crab, weaving this way and that, until eventually it tired and reached its destination. So many details, which added nothing but length to this story, bogged it down, the resolution a missed opportunity when a twist at the two-thirds mark had me hoping for more. Did I like anything about this book? The thing I liked best which allowed me to get through it was the audiobook's narrator, Lenny Henry, who reeled off a dozen voices with ease, the pacing of his reading zipping along faster than the actual story, yet easy to understand. His performance earned five stars. I also enjoyed the myths and the twist in the story. If only the story hadn't had as many arms as Shiva, and the characters hadn't been one dimensional, it might have had a chance to come together with the characters developing into beings I could truly care about. I really wish I could say I enjoyed this book more than I did since the author is so popular, his books and writing adored by many more people than I have fingers and toes. But I found it tedious, and I found it to be aimless too much of the time when I was aiming to be entertained by a story with depth. It is a companion book to American Gods, but can be read as a standalone. If you enjoyed other books by Gaiman, you'll probably enjoy this one, too. And I will be happy that you did, but it wasn't for me. Spider is going to meet Rosie. He takes her to a restaurant. Rosie opens her mouth and birds fly out and start attacking Spider. Spider then realizes that the women was not Rosie, but Bird Woman. The owner of the restaurant shoos all of the birds out of the reaturant and Bird Woman is gone. The owner confesses that he doesn't remember Spider being with anyone, but he wouldn't have sat him at a table for two if he wasn't. Rosie gets in contact with Spider and asks where they are going out to eat. Spider explains that he just wants to go home. Back at Charlie's house, he explains to Rosie that he really isn't Charlie, but Spider. Rosie is able to see who he truly is and wonders how she could ever think that he was Charlie. She asks if Charlie knew and Spider says yes. Rosie is so upset, disgusted, and confused that she calls off the wedding with Charlie and breaks up with Spider. She then goes home and tells her mother what happened. Charlie returns from England and again demands that Spider leave. Spider refuses once again and an argument begins. The argument ends when the police show up and arrest Charlie for embezzlement. Spider ges back to his room, but is attacked by flamingos. Spider then realizes that something is wrong and it has to do with Charlie. Daisy is the police officer who interrogates Charlie. She realizes that he is innocent and wants to prove it. Charlie realizes that birds are taking a special interest in him when hundreds if them settle on the fence surrounding the outdoor area of the prison. They just sit there an stare at Charlie. While this all happens. Graham Coats is visited by a client, Maeve Livingstone , who has figures out his embezzlement scam. Coats then kills her and stashes her body in the hidden room behind the bookcase in his office. Coats then assumes an alternate identity and fleas to the island of St. Andrews in the Carribean. The ghost of Maeve does not move on to the after life even when her husband begs he to through the phone and the television. She is determined to get revenge on Graham Coats. Spider teleports into the jail and breaks Charlie out. They teleport to many places, getting attakced by birds every place they go. Spider explains that the birds are after him and Charlie and Charlie confesses to the deal that he made with Bird. Charlie decides to call off the deal with Bird and asks spider to teleport them to Mrs. Higgler's house so that he can get the feather from Mrs. Spider explains that he can't teleport to Mrs. Higgler, but doesn't explain why very well. Spider returns Charlie to jail because that is the only place where the birds cannot get Charlie. Spider remains on his own to fend off the birds. Charlie informs Daisy of the hidden room in Coats's office. Once the police find the hidden room and the body of Maeve, Daisy is taken off the case since it is now considered a homicide case. The police believe that they can never convict Coats since he has gone to St. Daisy believes that everyone deserves justice and travels to St. Andrews to find Coats even though she is no longer on the case. Charlie is free to go. Charlie reunites with Spider and Spider realizes that they can't both get away from the birds. Spider sacrifices himself to the birds so that Charlie can hopefully call off the deal with Bird. The birds decend and carry Spider off to the Beginning of the World were Bird rips out his tongue and delivers him to Tiger. Spider uses the blood from his mouth and the dust of the ground to form a spider and sends that spider for help. Charlie travels back to Florida to Find Mrs. He goes to Mrs. Dunwiddy who is dying. Dunwiddy explains that Charlie used to be one boy, but the day that he broke her mirror ball, she split him into two boys, Charlie and Spider. Spider is the boy with all of the bad qualities and she banished him. That is why Spider couldn't teleport to to Florida because Mrs. Dunwiddy had banished him from there. Dunwiddy also explains that Mrs. Higgler moved back to her original home, St. Charlie then travels to St. Charlie rides a bike throughout the island, lookign for Mrs. He gets to the door of Coats, but Coats doesn't answer. Rosie and her mother's cruise stops on St. Andrew's for a day.

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