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Anansi Boys
Neil Gaiman

I promise this is the last Neil Gaiman book I'll read for a while. Mainly because now that I've read this one, there aren't any more books of his that I own that I haven't read yet. At the moment I'm going through my bookshelves and picking out the books that I bought but never managed to read right away. Next one up is called Book of Secrets ( I think) and I don't really know anything about it except that the author used to be an archaeologist and it has a really cool cover.

But I digress. Anansi Boys.

In my ramble on Fragile Things I said that Neil Gaiman writes in a way that makes fantasy types of novels accessible to those who aren't hardcore sci-fi/fantasy fans. Or I said something similar. Anyway, I think this book is a good example of that. It is actually a companion novel to Gaiman's previous book American Gods, but you wouldn't need to read American Gods to enjoy Anansi Boys. The only thing they really have in common is that they inhabit the same universe and Anansi is in both.

American Gods said some interesting things about what happens to myths and the characters of them when the people who believe in them go somewhere else. Like when people from the old world come to the new. The old gods go with them of course. Anansi Boys is a bit more lighthearted, and its main theme seems to be about families and how embarrassing they can be. The main character in American Gods is named Shadow. The main character in Anansi Boys is named Fat Charlie. Needles to say they are a little bit different in tone.

Anansi Boys reminded me of a Shakespearean comedy. You meet most of the characters fairly early on, mayhem ensues, and nobody ends up with the people they were with in the beginning. And it was fun. Simply enjoyable. I like a book that can make me laugh out loud along the way, and there aren't many that can surprise me enough to do that. This one did.