I suppose there are some ties between this book and American Gods, but they are pretty tenuous. If I'd never read the first book, I would still have liked this second book just as much. Unlike so much of Gaiman's work, I found this novel to be both comprehensible and not excessively dark. I liked Fat Charlie Nancy and was offended on his behalf by his brother Spider's treatment of him. But it turns out that Charles can take care of himself when he quits rejecting his heritage.

Sibling rivalry can be intense, but sometimes it's yourself that you are competing with. A lot of us have a hard time being kind to ourselves and believing in our own worth. Spider and Fat Charlie are symbiotic. Charlie teaches Spider to care about someone besides himself and Spider gives Charlie a reason to sing his own song. I loved how things worked out at the end.

I also have to say how much I enjoyed the villain of the piece, Grahame Coates, who is always referred to by both names. A swindler, head of a Ponzi scheme, absolutely (absatively in Grahame Coates speak) devoid of conscience, and, it turns out, pretty lacking in imagination.

It wasn't that people liked Grahame Coats, or that they trusted him. Even the people he represented thought he was a weasel. But they believed that he was their weasel, and in that they were wrong. He was his own weasel.

Watching him come undone is one of the great pleasures of this novel.

Book Number 468 of my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project

Another terrific literary journey from Neil Gaiman. Started a little slow, but gradually picked up pace and the fantasy adventure begins. Gaiman creates such incredible alternate realities, the worlds of gods and spirits become so real and tangible you can't help but be caught up in them like they are part of your own scene. Very emotional ending for me, but the emotions were elation and satisfaction. This has become my favorite Gaiman novel.

I really enjoyed this story. It's semi-related to Neil's "American Gods", but not much. This is more like a spin-off than a sequel, or even a companion. I enjoyed "American Gods" for a lot of reasons - it was kind of dark and mysterious and contained a lot of mythology. This book is much lighter, more fun and even jaunty.

I listened to this one, rather than read it, and had been using it as soothing background noise when I'd get a migraine, just letting it kind of wash over me and take my mind off of my head. More often than not I'd fall asleep, which was good. So anyway, not long ago, I drank a bit too much cheap wine and got a bit of a headache, and decided that rather than tormenting my eyes trying to read, I'd listen to this. The reader is good. Very good. At first, I thought that his voice was a little fast, just a bit hurried, but after a while I got used to his cadence and tone and accent, and had no trouble following along. It didn't take long for this, but if you're not used to the accent, it can take some adjustment.

The reader's vocal range is impressive. He does voices, which I usually really, really dislike, but in this book, because I'd not read it first and formed my own voices, I didn't hate it. At times though, it seemed like he forgot which accent and which "voice" he was supposed to be using, and that was a little distracting. There is a story-within-a-story aspect of the book, when Anansi's stories are being told, but as it was a different narration, it felt a little like Henry was just moving right along and then remembered which part he was actually reading. That's how it felt to me anyway.

That being said, I loved listening to his voice. My three favorite character voices were Charlie, Spider, and Grahame Coats. They were amusing voices, and very, very fitting for their characters. I can absolutely 100% guarantee that I would not have created these voices on my own had I read them, but if I ever read this in the future the voices Lenny Henry gave them will be the ones I hear.

There was quite a lot of humor in this story too, and at times I would find myself laughing out loud, or giggling to myself. I'm sure that I looked like a crazy person while I was listening to this on my headphones. Charlie is one of those characters who is funny without trying, and maybe because he's trying hard NOT to be. Whenever he would get angry, I'd find myself laughing, because he's just so endearing. He is something of a control freak, and so when things are out of his control, he's so out of his element that it makes him angry, and then he is hilarious. Poor guy. I feel bad for him, because it annoys me to no end when people laugh when I'm angry. Sorry Charlie. :)

Grahame Coats is hilarious too, in his uppity, cliche-happy mannerisms. He's a jerk, that's for sure, but I loved listening to the parts with him in it.

And Spider was just cooooool. Extremely self-centered and annoying at first, but I really grew to love him by the end.

I will have to pick up a copy of this book. It's definitely one that I will want to own. :)

This was my first experience with Gaiman and it was a perfect way for me to recover from a string of books that I did not like at all. It was a witty urban fantasy and the audiobook had excellent narration by Lenny Henry.

Fat Charlie discovers upon the death of his estranged father that his father was the god Anansi and that Fat Charlie has a brother named Spider who can be summoned by giving a message to any spider he encounters. Unfortunately, Fat Charlie sends this message and the arrival of Spider and his magic enormously complicates Charlie's life. Spider interferes with both his fiancé and his job and pulls Charlie into the world of the gods and their conflicts. I thought this book was a lot of fun until the last 10% or so. It became a little hectic then when all of the characters converged on a Caribbean island and the ending of the book was trite. Overall, however, I enjoyed this book.

"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."

My friend Kelly is one of those wonderful, eccentric people who is perfectly happy to be herself and doesn't care what anyone else thinks. I wouldn't call her weird, but I would definitely not call her normal. 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. He leads a perfectly ordinary life, with an ordinary job in bookkeeping and an ordinary fiancée - and he is fairly pleased with the placidity of it all. 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. 3 and a half stars.

Some people might prefer American Gods, with that epic tone, but I prefer Anansi Boys, and not just because it's entertaining and lighthearted, but because it seems to have been pulled off much more smoothly. Finally, Gaiman is writing about someone more like himself than Shadow was- a person who lives in England having adventures in America. Though Fat Charlie is American by origin, he's very British, and I guess that just made it easier for Gaiman because he took it and ran with it and everything was simply fantastic. It also feels a lot more like he's actually writing about the America I know.
In its way, this book is just as stunningly creative as American Gods-- the animal-people who represent the ancient African gods are excellent, especially, of course, Tiger. Just as creative are the characters, who are much easier to care for than any of the ones in Gods. They get into hopelessly awkward situations and seem so real that you can't help but be on their side. Even the villain is likable, in a nasty sort of way.
Finally, these modern-fantasy-splotched-in-alongside-the-real-world books are simply my favorite kind of fantasy novel. You can't get away with high fantasy anymore, really. The genre's been done to death over the last fifty years, and unless we want to tire it out completely, there are a bunch of authors who might want to give it a rest. Much more enjoyable, to me, are the fantasy novels that manage to be straight-up fantasy without having elves or castles or swords of any kind in them-- they're often ten times as creative, much fresher, and a lot more fun to read. Other books like this, from both youth and adult fiction, include Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones, the not-quite-fantasy-but-silly-enough-to-count Thursday Next and Jack Spratt novels by Jasper Fforde, and, on a slightly different note, the Terry Pratchett Discworld series, which takes every sentence and uses it to make fun of high fantasy and, more recently, of modern naily life. The Watch mini-series is particularly good at this.
At any rate, I simply liked Anansi Boys a lot more. It felt like a runner who'd had time to stretch their legs a bit and get into a rhythm.

Ωραίο βιβλίο, απίστευτα αστείο και ανάλαφρο. Λίγες οι σελίδες του, που διαβάζονται εύκολα σε ένα απόγευμα.

This book had so many great quotes that I don’t know where to start. Should I start this review with something profound like…

“Everybody’s going to be dead one day, just give them time.”

Or should I try my hand at something quirky like…

“His name is Marcus: he is four and a half and possesses that deep gravity and seriousness that only small children and mountain gorillas have ever been able to master.”

Or maybe… just maybe… I should start with something relatable like…

“I am remarkably likeable. Few people have ever been as likeable as I am. There is, frankly, no end to my likeability. People gather together in public assemblies to discuss how much they like me. I have several awards, and a small medal from a small country in South America which pays tribute both to how much I am liked and my general all around wonderfulness. I don't have it on me, of course. I keep my medals in my sock drawer.”

Naturally, we can all relate since we are ALL extremely likeable.

The story is simple (a blatant lie, but who cares?).

The story is about a man named Fat Charlie who has an average life. His father dies and he wishes he had a brother. When suddenly a long lost brother arrives and his world is no longer average.

Keeping our likeability to the side, let me tell you what I LIKED about this book.


♥ FAT CHARLIE, SPIDER, ROSIE and the FIANCÉ’S MOTHER

The characters of this book were nothing but entertaining. From the thin character named Fat Charlie (all because his father named him that one time and it stuck), to his brother Spider (since Fat Charlie told a spider he wished he had a brother and… what do you know…?), to his fiancé Rosie (because obviously she couldn’t tell the difference between Fat Charlie and Spider even though they look nothing alike) and to Rosie’s mother (who hates everyone but her daughter), this was one entertaining book. The secondary characters were just as well written, some lying, some dying, and others simply existing to side eye others.


♥ HUMOUR, MURDER and the WATERFALL IN THE BEDROOM

By now, I know a Neil Gaiman book by the writing style and the humour. This book was hilarious! There were times I laughed, and there were times I giggled, but most of the time I felt sorry for poor Fat Charlie with his unfortunate name and his unfortunate family, especially when he started having unfortunate luck. Gaiman is nothing if not witty and fun.

“I am frightened of nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

"Are you extremely frightened of nothing?"

"Absolutely terrified of it."

"I have nothing in my pockets. Would you like to see it?"

"No, I most definitely would not.”

I do love that dry, British wit.


In conclusion:

This is the type of book that anyone who loves Neil Gaiman’s writing will love. It’s fun, it’s quirky, it might seem a bit too dense at times and even too long, but some sentences are gold, so I just don’t care.

“Yes. We both have a bad feeling. Tonight we shall take our bad feelings and share them, and face them. We shall mourn. We shall drain the bitter dregs of mortality. Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled, but halved. No man is an island.”

Anansi Boys: Great Audio Narration by Lenny Henry
I've been on a Neil Gaiman trip lately since moving to London last year, and have recently listened to Neverwhere and Good Omens, which were both a lot more enjoyable now that I'm in tune with his themes and characters and style.

What really made Anansi Boys a great read was not just the Caribbean mythology, but the sublime humor and confidence of the character of Spider and his hapless brother Fat Charlie. When Spider casually steps in and steal's Charlie's fiancee and ruins his job and life, he does it with such unapologetic chutzpah it made me laugh and wince at the same time. And the three old ladies in Florida who help Charlie also are hilarious thanks to the brilliant audio narration of Lenny Henry, who manages to seamlessly switch between British accents, American accents, and Caribbean accents and imbue each character with their own warmth and charm.

He really does a bang-up job on this book, so I have to give him five stars for bringing this more light-hearted Neil Gaiman story to life. It's well worth another listen and now I'm revisiting American Gods, which I didn't like the first time but have decided to give another chance to.

n  2nd read, 2019n: I had forgotten about the lime, so that made my reread already worth it!

I had never previously read anything by Neil Gaiman but had heard his books were distinctive. After reading Anansi Boys, I wholeheartedly agree. Based on Caribbean folklore, this book is a fantasy fable about two sons of the god, Anansi, one of which is unsure of himself and easily embarrassed while the other is self-confident, mischievous, and irresponsible. The two were previously unaware of each other, and as they get acquainted their lives become an adventure. It’s a fantasy set partially in the real-world and partially in another realm. There appear to be no boundaries as to what may happen. Humor is sprinkled throughout and offsets some of the darker segments. Themes include good vs. evil, the power of storytelling, and development of hidden talents. I found myself reading it as if it were a stage play. Recommended to anyone interested in imaginative stories, fantasies, fables, or myths. I found it unusual, extremely creative, and very entertaining.

My brain is mush and is refusing to cooperate with this review. I have tried writing from my angry ocean, my sarcastic sea and my happy puddle only to discover that the water is either frozen over, shallow or all dried up. I do have a waterfall of sorrow I could tap into but once I go over it there isn’t any coming back for a bit and I am not up for the useless back paddling.

I liked the book but I did not like it as much as I did American Gods. Technically, it’s not fair to compare the two since this one is not a sequel even though I thought it was and had to be told differently and yes I am still bitter and pissy about it all. My feelings aren’t directed to the kind people who alerted me to my mistaken belief but it is directed towards those who think (American Gods, #2) should be listed in the title.

PROS: It felt like a visit to the same fictional universe that I loved with the other read. I enjoyed the writing and the story itself was entertaining.

CONS: The characters. They were not very interesting and their fate didn’t register on my give a shit meter. I felt a little removed from the story because of this.

LESSONS LEARNED: Do a more in-depth search when checking on a book’s series status and don't prejudge a book based on crap in parenthesis added to the title.