Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman

Some time ago I read Neil Gaiman's American Gods (2001) and it is, in my opinion a masterwork. Anansi Boys is set in the same world and appeared four years after its hugely successful predecessor. I hesitate to call Anansi Boys a sequel though, both books have very little to do with each other. In fact, you need not have read American Gods to enjoy this novel. It is more of a spin off really, following the son of one of the minor characters in American Gods. Most people seem to feel this novel is the lesser of the two. I'm not sure I agree with that. They are very different works so for readers looking for more of the same, Anansi Boys will be a disappointment. Judged on its own merits however, it is a very good novel.

Fat Charlie is not actually fat. It is a nickname he got from his father of all people. His father is, to put it mildly, a constant source of embarrassment. It is no wonder Charlie has put an ocean between them and went to the UK to live and work. Now he is engaged to Rosie who, not fully understanding Charlie's predicament, insists on inviting his father to the wedding. When Charlie relents and phones one of his father's neighbours to make inquiries, she tells him he has just passed away. At the funeral he learns that his father died in a karaoke bar in a most embarrassing fashion and that he was in fact the spider-god Anansi. To make matters even more confusing, Charlie finds out he has a brother named Spider. When the two meet, it quickly becomes apparent his bother is everything Charlie is not.

Although the novel is very dark at times, Anansi was a trickster god and not a very pleasant one at that, it is a comedy at heart. Poor Charlie is at the receiving end quite often. He is a bit of an anti hero. I'm not too fond of that type of characters. Dutch literature is overflowing with losers of all kinds and in the few years my teachers tried to instil some appreciation for this type of writing in me. I'm afraid they achieved the opposite. Keeping that in mind, it is perhaps not surprising I read a lot of fantasy and science fiction. I'm a bit more tolerant of Charlie because of the way Gaiman uses him in the novel. The contrast with his brother enables Gaiman to move the narrative from Monty Python-esque absurdity to deeply tragic moments and back again. 

Spider is the one that got all the god stuff, as one of the characters puts it. He is a trickster, a player of confidence games. He is also completely hedonistic and not one to take other people's feelings into account. He feels no remorse at taking over Charlie's life including his fiancée. Having a fiancée is new to him however, women were never more than temporary entertainment. Rosie makes him think Charlie might be on to something. Charlie on the other hand, is finding out that standing up for himself, makes him appear more like his brother. The drifting from complete opposites to men who could in fact be related is one of the things I liked most about it. Gaiman builds it up very well.

There are a number of secondary characters in the novel that contribute to it being hilariously funny at times. Charlie's future mother-in-law Mrs. Noah, the embodiment of everything negative people say about their mother-in-law, and Mrs. Maeve Livingstone, a very British vengeful ghost, are the two I enjoyed most. Gaiman doesn't stop there though, the cast is very colourful as a whole and he makes excellent use of them. They include Charlie's sociopathic boss, four voodoo practising old ladies and a disappointed police woman who refuses to give up on a murder case. Their characteristics are a bit exaggerated for the comical effect of course, but Gaiman is careful not to overdo it.

Gaiman's work is often infused with fairytales and mythology and this novel is no exception. In American Gods he borrows liberally from a number of different mythologies. In this novel it is more contained to Anansi stories. Anansi is a Caribbean deity of West-African origin. Other than that he is a trickster, not unlike Loki in American Gods, I don't know that much about the mythological figure, but he is so widely known that there are probably many variations for Gaiman to borrow from. I'd be interested in hearing what someone more familiar with the material makes of Gaiman's treatment of the myth.

Anansi Boys is a fast and very entertaining read. I wasn't sure if this book would work for me but despite the lighter tone of the novel, it is a complex piece of writing. Gaiman juggles the characters and their individual stories expertly and finds a good balance between the comical and darker parts of the stories. The tone of the novel makes it easy to read, without making the story seem simple. Gaiman delivers his tale as confidently as Spider must be feeling when he bends the world to his will. It is perhaps not quite the book readers who loved American Gods were hoping for. He simply takes his writing in an entirely different direction. It is a very well written novel though, one that certainly encourages me to read more of his work.

Book Details
Title: Anansi Boys
Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: Review Books
Pages: 348
Year: 2005
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0-7553-0507-8
First published: 2005

American Gods - Neil Gaiman

The first time someone told me I should really read American Gods was back in 2004. It had been out for a few years back then and made quite an impact. It won a whole shelf full of awards and was nominated for even more. The most recent person to tell me to read this was my girlfriend, who wrote a very positive review about it a few years back. I guess it was time to let them have their way. I've read it. I think it was a good thing I didn't read it back in 2004 though. I'm sure I got more out of it now than I would have back then. Gaiman has delivered a complex novel and a very clever one. It is also a novel that will leave a lot of readers with the feeling that it wasn't what they expected of it.

It is well known that people create gods and bring them with them when they migrate. America is a hard country for gods. Many of them end up abandoned and forgotten, when their people die out, move on or start worshipping other deities. Of late, new gods have shown up. Gods of consumerism, capitalism, highways, television, Internet and other aspects of modern life. They are on a collision course with the old gods. In the midst of this brewing conflict, the freshly released convict Shadow is approached by the mysterious Mr. Wednesday. He is a man with a stake in the battle ahead and he means to come out the winner. It draws Shadow into a world of belief, divine realities and extinct religions he never knew existed.

I called American Gods a clever novel in the introduction and it is on many levels. Gaiman sprinkles clues about the identity of the characters around. Mr. Wednesday is a fine example. Wednesday used to be Wodan's day, Wodan being another name for Odin, the Allfather. A title that in itself has a meaning to the narrative. There are plenty of examples of this. Gaiman draws from a wide variety of sources. Egyptian, Norse, Celtic, Hindu and Slavic mythological figures are used in the novel but also figures form West-African, Caribbean and Native American folklore and even the odd biblical figure. America itself is not entirely without old representatives either. American legend Jonny Appleseed makes an appearance. It takes a well read reader to spot them all in one reading although Gaiman gets a bit more generous with his hints towards the end of the book.

We see most of the story through the eyes of Shadow. He does his name justice in many ways in the novel. He has made some bad decisions in his life and ends up doing time for his crimes. When he is released he is drawn into the shadows in another way, when Wednesday introduces him to the world of fading gods. Many things about Shadow remain unknown. His appearance is only vaguely described, his past, except for the time spent in prison and a few brief references to his mother, remains undisclosed.He leaves his old life behind him, adopts new identities and travels the land anonymously, without really putting down roots. He in effect becomes the Shadow he is named after, before coming out the other end and gaining a new identity to replace the one he's shed.

Shadow is the central figure in the novel, the linchpin the story turns around, the one who embodies the biggest mystery the plot offers. Gaiman does much more with the book than just tell his story though. There are numerous sub-plots and here and there seemingly unrelated interludes on the activities of various mythological figures and how they are doing in their  unfriendly new land. Adaptations and survival strategies are many but most of them seem to be stuck in the parts of America passed by by progress. They hide out in declining rural areas, poverty stricken parts of towns and cities, running businesses that are doomed in the face of competition by multinationals and national franchises. And yet, each of them retains a spark of their former power. In the end, Gaiman brings most of these plotlines together. The way he handles that is another way in which this book is clever. Many of the subplots contain elements that turn out to be significant to Shadow in one way or another.

It's this meandering structure of the story that will be problematic for a lot of readers. Shadow, as main characters go, is not the most lively of protagonists. This is an intentional choice by Gaiman. He goes so far as to have one of the secondary characters tell Shadow he is not truly alive. Shadow's responses to the various crises he faces is muted and he lets himself be led by Wednesday a lot. Add to that Gaiman's tendency to digress from the main plot and the fact that the climax of the novel will most likely not be what readers are expecting at the beginning of the book, and you have a recipe for one star reviews. From what I can tell, American Gods has gathered a few of those.

When you get right down to it, I like American Gods as much because of what it isn't as I do because of what it is. It is a book about belief but not religion, a book about a road trip but no celebration of small town life in the American heartland, a book about mythology but no clash of awesome Olympic type gods. Gaiman tackles these themes in his own way. It can be quirky but also tragic, and poetic but also harsh. Many of the ideas in this novel have been used before, by others as well as Gaiman himself, but he manages to mix them in a unique way. American Gods is a remarkable novel whichever way you look at it. Certainly a work that will divide readers but in my opinion a work of twenty-first century literature that one ought to have read.

Book Details
Title: American Gods
Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: William Morrow
Pages: 465
Year: 2001
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-380-97365-1
First published: 2001

Lana Reviews: American Gods - Neil Gaiman

Having worked my way through a few of Neil Gaiman's books already and found that I enjoy his style of writing immensely, I was delighted when I, during a random search of our bookshelves, found Anansi Boys amongst the many books I have yet to read. It was only after I had added it to my Goodreads 'to be read' list that I realized I should read American Gods first. unfortunately, we did not own a copy of that one, but my boyfriend was kind enough to gift me a copy for Christmas. It took me a few weeks to actually pick it up and get started, but as it were, the story was worth the wait.

I could say that this is a book about a man who, fresh out of jail and having lost everything he held dear, chooses to start working for another man; a decision that will change his life, or at least the way he looks at the world. I could say that it is about old and new gods, and the ongoing war between them. I could say it is about the dead haunting the living, or gods preying on humans, or journeys to various parts of the United States. I suppose I could even say that it is a crime story featuring a serial killer, and it wouldn't exactly be wrong. There are a lot of smaller stories in this book that together make up a bigger story. Still, we mostly follow Shadow, the man that we meet in jail at the start of the book.

I found it quite hard to decide what to think of Shadow. He is a criminal - or at least he has made some bad decisions prior to when we first meet him - or he wouldn't be in jail. Yet, he seems to have a certain sense of what is right and wrong, and seems to strive to try and do the former by himself and those he meets. He appears to care about the well-being of the people around him, and he is certainly loyal to a fault once he has given his word. I suppose that his character could have been made more interesting and less... flat, perhaps, but for me Gaiman's way of writing him worked just fine.

The story is a dark one, with elements that clearly suggest it is meant for adults. Sometimes the language is crude, but when it is, it is because it needs to be; it is part of the setting that Gaiman is building. None of the characters come off as perfect; they all have dark sides or dark histories or other flaws. In this story, even the gods have flaws, just like they used to in the old mythologies.

What I remember really enjoying while reading American Gods, were all the little references to various old mythologies of the world, like for example Norse and Egyptian mythology; I imagine that Gaimain must have been doing quite some research to be able to put together all the various characters that are supposed to symbolize old gods or old rituals in this book. While few of them were very well-known to me - he had chosen to leave out the Greek and Roman pantheon which are the ones I know best - I could still recognize several and make good guesses about who they were supposed to be. I also liked his take on who the new gods are, and how he chose to portray them.

As mentioned before, American Gods is in a way one story made up of several stories. But I didn't feel that it was hard to follow at any point, or that anything was left unresolved; I am pretty sure I got answers to most of the riddles I encountered throughout my reading. And that feels nice; when everything falls in place and you feel you have just read a well-composed story. That's how all the Gaiman books I've read so far have made me feel, and why I am always glad to read more of them.

So basically, I would heartily recommend American Gods. I think it is a good story, and a story that has been put together really well. I have always found Gaiman's style of writing entertaining and easy to follow, so too in this book even though it is darker than the other books by him that I have read. In American Gods you get to go on a journey on several levels; not only do you get to travel to various places in the United States, but also to other places in this world and other worlds, and through time itself. And of course, if potential readers are interested in various old mythologies, that is probably just a bonus.

Book Details
Title: American Gods
Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: William Morrow
Pages: 465
Year: 2001
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-380-97365-1
First published: 2001