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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Sep 2005, 336 pages
Paperback:
Oct 2006, 416 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
A mythology for a modern age -- complete with dark prophecy, family dysfunction, mystical deceptions, and killer birds. Not to mention a lime.
Anansi Boys
God is dead. Meet the kids.
When Fat Charlie's dad named something, it stuck. Like calling
Fat Charlie "Fat Charlie." Even now, twenty years later, Charlie
Nancy can't shake that name, one of the many embarrassing "gifts"
his father bestowed -- before he dropped dead on a karaoke stage
and ruined Fat Charlie's life.
Mr. Nancy left Fat Charlie things. 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 ... just like Dear
Old Dad. 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. Some said he could cheat even
Death himself.
Returning to the territory he so brilliantly explored in his
masterful New York Times bestseller, American Gods, the
incomparable Neil Gaiman offers up a work of dazzling
ingenuity, a kaleidoscopic journey deep into myth that is at once
startling, terrifying, exhilarating, and fiercely funny -- a true
wonder of a novel that confirms Stephen King's glowing assessment
of the author as "a treasure-house of story, and we are lucky to
have him."
Which is Mostly About
Names and Family Relationships
It begins, as most things begin, with a song.
In the beginning, after all, were the words, and they came with a
tune. That was how the world was made, how the void was divided, how
the lands and the stars and the dreams and the little gods and the
animals, how all of them came into the world.
They were sung.
The great beasts were sung into existence, after the Singer had
done with the planets and the hills and the trees and the oceans and
the lesser beasts. The cliffs that bound existence were sung, and the
hunting grounds, and the dark.
Songs remain. They last. The right song can turn an emperor into a
laughing stock, can bring down dynasties. A song can last long after
the events and the people in it are dust and dreams and gone. That's
...
With a smaller cast of central characters than American Gods, Gaiman is in his element with Anansi Boys. Stories that retell myths are two-a-penny but stories that flow with the gleeful confidence of Anansi Boys are much rarer.
(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Full Review
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Neil Gaiman grew up in England and, although Jewish, attended Church of England
schools, including Ardingly College, a boarding school in West Sussex (South of
England). During the early 1980s he worked as a journalist and book
reviewer. His first book was a biography of the band Duran Duran. He
moved from England to his wife's hometown in the American midwest several years
ago. He and his family now live in a renovated Victorian farmhouse where (he
says) his hobbies are writing things down, hiding, and talking about himself in
the third person.
In addition to
American Gods,
Anansi Boys and
Coraline (a fantastically creepy
book for children, particularly so in the audio version read by ...
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