Product Description

Fat Charlie Nancy is not actually fat. He was fat once but he is definitely not fat now. No, right now Fat Charlie Nancy is angry, confused and more than a little scared - right now his life is spinning out of control, and it is all his dad's fault. If his rotter of an estranged father hadn't dropped dead at a karaoke night, Charlie would still be blissfully unaware that his dad was Anansi the spider god. He would have no idea that he has a brother called Spider, who is also a god. And there would be no chance that said brother would be trying to take over his life, flat and fiancee, or, to make matters worse, be doing a much better job of it than him. Desperate to reclaim his life, Charlie enlists the help of four more-than-slightly eccentric old ladies and their unique brand of voodoo - and between them they unleash a bitter and twisted force to get rid of Spider. But as darkness descends and badness begins is Fat Charlie Nancy going to get his life back in one piece or is he about to enter a whole netherworld of pain. This work includes extra material exclusive to "Headline Review's" edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #230539 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Review
'Whizzing, twirling, erupting into dazzling cartwheels, firing off showers of multi-colored sparks, chortling to itself and muttering killer-diller one-liners, ANANSI BOYS draws the reader, ever more wide-eyed and amazed, into a world both feather-light and chockablock with mortal danger. Only Neil Gaiman could have brought this fraught enchantment into being, and the ongoing, ultimately revelatory travails of Fat Charlie Nancy display Gaiman's remarkable imaginative powers at full stretch. This book is going to sail off the shelves' Peter Straub -- Peter Straub 20050601 'A warm, funny, immensely entertaining story about the impossibility of putting up with your relations -- especially if they happen to be Gods. Anansi Boys combines the anarchy of Douglas Adams with a Wodehousian generosity of spirit. Guaranteed to make all but the most committed arachnophobe feel gratefully towards spiders' Susanna Clarke -- Susanna Clarke 20050601 'Neil Gaiman is one of the few genuinely intelligent writers of what is generally described as 'post-modern' fiction -- his work is thoughtful, wise, spiritually challenging and incredibly funny!From Gaiman, it's a treasure, every word. I can't imagine a better way to start a holiday' Manda Scott, Church of England Newspaper, 22 July 2005 -- Manda Scott, Church of England Newspaper 20050722 'Brilliant mingling of the mundane and the fantastic' Publishers Weekly, 18/7/05 -- Publishers Weekly 20050718 'Gaiman juggles several intersecting narratives expertly!blithely echoing numerous creation myths and folklore motifs, Terry Southern's antic farces, Evelyn Waugh's comic contes cruel, and even -- here and there -- Muriel Spark's whimsical supernaturalism!enormously entertaining throughout' Kirkus Reviews, 15 July 2005 -- Kirkus Reviews 20050715 'The author...gives us powerful deities - Anansi is as charming and dangerous as he ought to be! A thoughtful, atmospheric novel' -- The Times 20050917 'A book it's impossible not to love' -- Starburst 20050916 'Gaiman is best-known for his Sandman series of graphic novels, but here he demonstrates an equally vivid ability to portray the mythic and the fantastic in comic prose...slapstick and verbal pyrotechnics are the primary motors of the book. The "apparent effortlessness" of this sort of writing requires planning and execution of a very high order... Neil Gaiman is a very good writer indeed, and this is a very funny bedtime story' -- Daily Telegraph 20051001 'Bizarre, bonkers!rather brilliant' -- Ian Hislop 20051001 'Charm...and plotting that pirouettes on a dime. Urbane and sophisticated' Time Out" -- Time Out 20051012 'Exhilarating and terrifying' -- Independent 20051012 'This is the most accomplished of Gaiman's novels thus far... Anansi Boys has charm going for it and a plot that pirouettes on a dime. Urbane and sophisticated' -- Time Out 20051012 'Part soap opera, part macabre fairy tale, part supernatural horror... Gaiman's writing is as sharp as ever, full of flair and fun...his characters are huge and full-blooded... Often hilarious and just as often unsettling, Anansi Boys is a dark delight' -- SFX magazine 20051029 '[Neil Gaiman is the] literary equivalent of a sexy rock star' -- Scotland on Sunday 20051113 'A warm, funny, immensely entertaining story... Anansi Boys" combines the anarchy of Douglas Adams with a Wodehousian generosity of spirit' -- Susanna Clarke 'As imaginative fiction goes it has become clear that Gaiman has long since left any box. His credentials as a bankable novelist have grown with each title!from his epic of warring divinities, AMERICAN GODS, to ANANSI BOYS, which debuted at number 1 on the New York Times" bestseller list.' -- Time, Australia 20060530 'Mixing farce and fantasy, epic mythology and domestic drama, Gaiman's novel is a clever piece of storytelling and a celebration of the magic of make-believe.' -- Independent on Sunday 20060604

Peter Straub
‘Whizzing, twirling, erupting into dazzling cartwheels... ANANSI BOYS draws the reader...into a world both feather-light and chockablock with mortal danger'

Manda Scott
‘Thoughtful, wise, spiritually challenging and incredibly funny'

Customer Reviews

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn
good and ill together. That line from Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well captures the essence of Neil Gaiman's latest creation, Anansi Boys.

Charlie Nancy is one of life's more passive characters. He is perpetually embarrassed by those around him. He grew up in Florida embarrassed by his father who had an eye for the ladies, never seemed to have a job, and who bestowed upon Charlie the nickname "Fat Charlie". It is a name that stuck to Charlie like glue and has followed him everywhere he goes, even to England where he now lives and works. More than anything else, Fat Charlie is embarrassed by himself. His life is an endless stream of self-conscious needless apologies for his life. As one would expect from a character like Charlie he is timid in front of his boss and can't seem to convince his fiancé that there is nothing wrong with consummating their relationship prior to their marriage. The word perpetually frustrated comes to mind here.

As the story opens, Fat Charlie is back in Florida for the funeral of his father. Charlie no doubt hopes his dad's death, which occurred while singing a song in a Karaoke bar much to Charlie's embarrassment, will put an end to his own state of perpetual embarrassment. That is the closure Charlie seeks. But the old ladies who made up his Dad's circle of friends tell Fat Charlie that their father was something of a god, in fact a spider god. They also tell Fat Charlie he has a brother. Fat Charlie, of course, will have none of this nonsense and returns to England.

Of course, life is never so simple for any character drawn by Neil Gaiman. It turns out Fat Charlie does have a brother, Spider, who is everything Charlie is not. Spider is personable, charming, glib, and has the ability to charm the pants off just about anyone he desires. As the name Spider implies, Charlie is soon drawn into the parallel world inhabited by Spider a world of small gods and vengeful animals. Fat Charlie is introduced to a whole new universe of characters and his ability to distinguish between fact and fantasy grows increasingly thin.

Anansi Boys worked on two levels for me. First, I actually grew attached to the character of Fat Charlie. I was surprised that I developed such empathy for Fat Charlie. Generally, I do not find 'passive' characters all that attractive, but, as the book wore on I felt myself rooting for him. Second, Anansi Boy is, at its heart a story about a dysfunctional (but very funny) family and explores how its members try to reach some accommodation with their past and their present relationships. This is not meant to imply that the book is weighed down with ponderous statements on the meaning of life or families; far from it. The great success of Gaiman's writing in my opinion is that he can handle a topic with both humor and sensitivity. The story does not bog down in 'deep thoughts'. Gaiman spins his yarn and leaves it up to the reader to read between the laughs. I found the conclusion to be particularly well done.

I very much liked Anansi Boys. It should certainly satisfy fans of Gaiman's body of work. It is also accessible to anyone who has not read Gaiman.

Anansi Boys, like the spiders that form its conceptual heart, draws you inexorably into its web until you cannot get out. Fortunately, Gaiman has spun such a fine yarn that you don't mind being ensnared at all. This was a book worth reading.

High quality entertainment
Neil Gaiman introduced Compe Anansi, the African spider-god and trickster, as a minor character in his last best seller, "American Gods." Although American Gods was readable, Anansi Boys is better. As another reviewer has pointed out, there were places where American Gods just felt like a bit of a re-hash of the Brief Lives story arc from "Sandman." By comparison, Anansi Boys takes the character and background of the African (or by now African-American) god Anansi and riffs on the mythos with highly original results.

Anansi himself is a brilliantly memorable creation - a dapper, fedora-wearing, wisecracking, Cab Calloway lookalike with a perpetual eye for the ladies (even after death) and a soft-shoe shuffle "that was popular for about half an hour in Harlem in the 1920's," and, in consequence, a constant source of toe-curling mortification to his estranged son Fat Charlie. When the story opens, Fat Charlie is living mundanely in South London, with a lukewarm fiancée, a mother-in-law-to-be from Hell, and a job working for a man who resembles the psychotic twin of Reggie Perrin's boss. He's one of life's mysteriously selected fall guys - his father plays humiliating jokes on him as a kid, promotion passes him over; coffee gets spilt on his lap, his embarrassing nickname survives weight loss and a 3000-mile move across the Atlantic, a wrongful arrest causes neighbours to assume that he must be a Yardie. Things, however, are about to get worse ... far, far worse.

Told with the authorial voice of a generous, stand-up raconteur (Gaiman credits Lenny Henry in the acknowledgements) this is entertainment of a high quality. As with "American Gods", there's a certain amount of magic. Appropriately, however, and at best, it often appears as verbal trickery, so that you can watch the storyteller shifting the perceptions of the listener as they talk (in one of the best scenes, Fat Charlie's boss tries to sack his twin brother Spider, and the usual redundancy spiel goes horribly wrong). I'd always assumed Gaiman did the plot of "Good Omens," and Pratchett did the dialogue, but this demonstrates that he can do both ... now, if only the two of them could get back together for "Good Omens II" ..?

Man, those gods hold a grudge
I was so excited to see Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys on the list of available books, because I've always been a big fan. Gaiman's prose always makes me want to write. I don't mean this in the "I could have done better than that" way, but instead Gaiman inspires me to great heights whenever I read anything by him. Anansi Boys is even better than American Gods, with the story being more personal and, if anything, more intimate. I've been a big fan of Gaiman's since the Sandman comic series, and nothing here will change any of that. Anansi Boys is fantastic.

Fat Charlie (not his real name, but it's a name his father gave him, and names his father gives always seem to stick) was taken to England by his mother when he was younger, mainly to get away from his father. Fat Charlie has had a good life, and is now engaged to a wonderful woman, but things start to spiral downward when his fiancée, Rosie, insists on inviting his father to their wedding. Fat Charlie finds out that his father has just died, and goes to Florida for the funeral. Thus begins a sequence of events that will introduce Fat Charlie to his charming brother, Spider, a man with the powers of a god. The powers of his father, truth be told. Spider is impulsive and always looking out for his own pleasure, which just makes things worse. But things just get out of control when the other gods get involved. Their father, who is known as Anansi, wasn't exactly well-liked by the other gods, and their revenge may just affect the boys too. Fat Charlie is in way over his head and, for once, so is Spider. Even the old ladies who seem to know what is going on may not be able to help them before it's too late.

Turning any of the pages in Anansi Boys was a pure treat for me, as Gaiman's prose just leaps off the page. Gaiman seems fascinated with stories, as most of his other works indicate as well, and here is no different. Anansi stole the stories of the world from Tiger way back when the world was new, and Tiger has forever resented it. Gaiman's love for stories shines through, the words sounding almost lyrical.

"Stories are like spiders, with all the long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look so 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." Pg 39

The narration of the story is interesting. The book is told in third person, but occasionally the narrator will turn and talk to the reader. Just an aside or two, and then back to the story. It's a wonderful technique, which just adds to the mythological aspects of the book. There isn't a clunky word in this book anywhere.

Gaiman also gives us a variety of interesting characters, whose stories intertwine gracefully, though a couple of the coincidences grate just a little. This isn't as annoying as it could have been, perhaps because of the mythological nature of the book which seems to require these sorts of things. Fat Charlie ends up meeting Daisy, a financial cop who just happens to be called in on a case involving him? Whatever the case, these were only minor annoyances, and were lessened by the type of story Gaiman is telling.

Fat Charlie and Spider make an interesting pair, and while their secret did surprise me, it fits wonderfully in hindsight, given the personality that we see in Fat Charlie. He's not a go-getter, reluctant to put himself out in the middle where he might get hurt. He's a great singer, but he gets complete stage-fright when he's supposed to do it in front of people. He seems to have settled for Rosie and he doesn't have a lot of drive. Spider, meanwhile, is almost the exact opposite, living everything in the moment and moving on when he feels like it.

Another good character is Grahame Coats, Fat Charlie's evil boss, who moves from scam to scam whenever things start to get a little hot for him. He always has a contingency plan, but this time, things seem to be going very wrong, and he starts acting crazier and crazier. One thing I didn't like about Coats is how unclear it was how much of Coats personality comes from another source, or whether it's just at the end where this happens. Ambiguity can be good, and I'm sure that's what Gaiman was aiming for, but I think it was a little too ambiguous where Coats was concerned.

The main female characters, Daisy and Rosie, aren't as strong as I might have liked, but they do have wonderful moments within the narrative. Where the relationships between these four characters end up is a bit obvious, but I enjoyed watching how they got there. Daisy is an impulsive cop who is willing to walk away from her job to get the bad guy and Rosie, while she seems fairly weak at the beginning of the book, shows an inner fire later that belies that image of her. The old women are background characters (both Rosie's mom and the old women who help Fat Charlie), but are all entertaining in their own way.

The plot of the book is very straightforward, despite its supernatural origin. There aren't any inexplicable flights of fancy in Anansi Boys; instead, every trip to another reality is grounded solidly in the story. I enjoyed the mythology that Gaiman uses, and I loved how the revenge motif traveled throughout the old gods for what Anansi did to them for all those years. And I found the relationship between the two brothers fascinating.

All in all, Anansi Boys is yet another winner from Gaiman.

David Roy