Once again Gaiman has left me feeling unsure of whatever it is that I just read. He always does this. It's always good, but I would never be able to explain it. I was also confused for a very long time waiting for it to connect with American Gods in some way other than both of them having gods. Maybe it did and it's just been so long I didn't recognize it. Eventually I just decided they didn't really have much to do with one another and moved along.
Can anyone explain the connection between the books so I don't have to go dive back in?

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman blends the best attributes of Gaiman’s extraordinary talent: excellent writing, original storytelling, mythic elements, and confidence.

A central theme in the narrative is about confidence and that is also how Gaiman tells the tale, his writing exudes confidence, he writes with a virtuoso’s swagger. Not really taking off where American Gods left off, but neither does it depart from Gaiman’s myth and legends foundations, Anansi Boys sings the song of Fat Charlie, Mr. Nancy’s somewhat estranged son and how he gets his groove back.

Someone should make a list of all the stories about trickster gods and I think that would make a great collection - maybe even a story about all the trickster gods, like a convention! Loki, Coyote, Anansi, etc. Hey Neil!

Very entertaining.

Contrary to some critics who take themselves quite seriously who thumbed their noses at "Anansi Boys," I, who do not take my self too seriously, loved it. Is it as good a novel as "American Gods?" Well, yes it is. However, it is a different kind of tale. You will not find the darkness layered on so thickly in "American Gods" in this tale. Nor do I think that Gaiman intended the reader to find the same level of seriousness in what Gaiman calls his follow up "adult" novel to "American Gods." Gaiman is capable of crafting light hearted fantasy with ease. At times, Gaiman approaches almost slapstick humor. In his preface to this novel, Gaiman tips his hat to P.G. Wodehouse, Zora Hurston, Tex Avery, and Thorne Smith. I won't take umbrage at that. The influence of each author is present in the pages of "Anansi Boys." Whether you agree that Gaiman paid appropriate deference to his named muses, is irrelevant. After all, the French are wild about Jerry Lewis, while other cultures scratch their heads in wonder, grimace, shrug their shoulders and say, "Well you know how the French are." I say,whatever works. Gaiman weaves his story around "Fat Charlie" Nancy, the son of Anansi in his human form. The Anansi tales grew out of west African folklore, particularly the area of Ghana. Anansi simply means spider. Whether in human or animal form, Anansi is a trickster. He uses his wit to outfox his opponents. Pardon the outfox comment. But after all, the Anansi tales morphed into the B'rer Rabbit and "B'rer Fox tales told by Uncle Remus as recounted by Joel Chandler Harris. From time to time the world needs a story of where the bully loses to a much smaller, seemingly helpless opponent. We have bullies enough in this world who never lose. Me, I'll thank Gaiman for giving us a story where there was more to the little guy than was apparent who prevailed against odds which he shouldn't have overcome. I have a sudden desire to find a green fedora and some lemon yellow gloves. Why, I might even try a little karaoke. If you don't want to listen, I won't mind a bit. For those wondering at the tenor of this review, check out Charles Taylor's NYTimes review from 2005, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/09/boo.... Really, Mr. Taylor, suspending reason for a few hundred pages and finding a value in folklore and mythology does a body good.

Iaako se vodi kao nastavak Američkih bogova ova knjiga je sve osim toga. S Bogovima dijeli jednog sporednog lika (Anasija) i svjet u kojem se odvija radnja.
Negdi sam pročitao da je Gaiman Anasijeve dečke počeo pisati prine Američkih Bogova ali da je njih prije dovršio. To se apsolutno vidi u stilu kojim su te knjige pisane. Dok su Bogovi mračniji i više podsjećaju na mitove Anasijevi dečki su, poput prijašnjih Gaimanovih djela, bajka. Lijepo osmišljena i ispričana bajka koja te drži priljepljenog za knjigu od prve do zadnje stranice. Toliko mi se bilo teško odvojit od nje da sam pročita i par stranica posvete što inače ne činim

Ako su sve priče i bile Anasijeve više nisu jer ih je Gaiman prisvoijo sebi.
Čista petica i naklon do poda

"U svakom zivotu", zapoceo je, "mora pasti pokoja kap kise. Casa meda iste casu zuci."
"Gdje ima smijeha," pridometnuo je Spider, "bude i placa."
:D
Ma svi razgovori Grahama i Spidera u poslovicama su uzivancija...
Za razliku od podosta ozbiljnih Bogova (iako su ona slavenska bozanstva isto za umrijet od smijeha), Decki su bas u sasavom tonu s naivnim zapletom koji zapravo i nije u fokusu. Vise do izrazaja mi dolazi taj prekrasni stil, to me okupira da ne stignem misliti na nista drugo! Gaiman me inace zna raznjeziti na uvodu ili oprostaju, tako da od njega ocekujem poeziju. Obicno se zagrijem za dva ili tri lika i to ako je rijec o epskim sagama, ali pratiti sudbine svih u Deckima mi je bilo jednako interesantno. Uspjela sam se emocionalno angazirati oko svake osobe :) Ma zao mi je da je gotovo... U opsjednutoj Gaiman fazi sam i ostala mi dva romancica. Kako dalje?
Jedva cekam Bogove na TV-u...

„Момчетата на Ананси“ е много хубава мрачна приказка... Според мен, тя не достига великолепието на „Американски богове“, но все пак има своите силни моменти и определено си заслужава четенето. Книгата не е нейно продължение, обаче действието се развива в същия мистичен свят и атмосферата отново е доста очарователна. Нийл Геймън е разказал любопитната история на децата на бог Ананси със страшно приятно чувство за хумор!



„Приказките са като паяци с много и дълги крачка, приказките са като паяжини, в които човек се оплита, но които изглеждат толкова красиви, когато уловят погледа ти под някое листо, обкичени с утринна роса и така изящно свързани една с друга.“

I love Neil Gaiman's Sandman so much that I am desperate to love the rest of his work, but I can't do much more than like it because it's mostly only okay.

He deals with all the stuff I love -- mythology, the occult, death, dreams, the urban fantastic -- but he's too tongue-in-cheek. When I read one of his novels, I feel like I'm reading the Nick Hornby of fantasy. Too clever, too hip and too cool for his own good.

It's not that I don't like his prose work. I do. And I even love some of it (like Wolves in the Walls, if that counts, and Stardust), but when I get to what should be the meat of his oeuvre, American Gods and its sequel, i can't help feeling let down.

It's not that I don't like his characters. Mr. Nancy, Spider and Fat Charlie are pretty groovy; the book reads fast and is entertaining; I even dig the ending, but somehow none of that is enough. I want more from Neil. I want to be dazzled, and he teases me with bedazzlement constantly, but I've only been dazzled by Dreams -- nothing else has come close.

And maybe that's my problem right there: having found Gaiman through Sandman, everything that's followed pales in comparison. I am always looking for greatness, and all I get is pretty good.

So if you read this review, Neil, just know that I love you, and I will always read you, and I am constantly looking for that drug-like hit I had the first time I bought a Sandman comic (and yes I am that old) and was blown away by your storytelling. You are a victim of your own best work.

Please, please, please blow me away again.

Eto, od tolike muke u jednom trenu dođosmo do petice, samo zbog kraja, inače, realno četvorka, jaka četvorka, ali ajde, 5⭐️ neobjašnjivo i nek ide tako!

I've come to recognize that one of the main reasons I enjoyed this book so much was that I listened to the audiobook, performed by comedian Lenny Henry, whose background as a Brit of Caribbean descent made him the perfect choice to bring the characters to life. A lot of audiobooks aren't very good, but this one way great, and really brings out the fact that Anansi stories are meant to be heard.

It's recognizable Gaiman stuff, with the fish-out-of-water narrator in a modern fantasy world, with the author sxploring the history and the form of the mythic story, but there's a level of deprecating humor in this book that is lacking in other works by Gaiman.

One can catch snips of wit in any of his books. Any good book must include some humor: an author might as futilely try to excise pain or desire from life as humor. Gaiman has never placed any such artificial limits on his work; indeed, the only limits on his books are those he, himself cannot overcome.

Previously, his humor was only an occasional element, but there was apparently something in the writing of this particular book which finally allowed him to unleash his sense of the comic as a whole entity. The text swims and bobs with the ridiculous, the unfortunate, and the clever.

After reading 'Good Omens', written by Gaiman and Prachett, I was told that without Prachett, it would have retained none of the humor. I now begin to wonder whether if Pratchett added anything at all. Indeed, this work of Gaiman's overshadows that earlier work in both degrees and shades of the insightful and entertaining.

With the focus on Anansi and stories, the book provides an amusing analysis of storytelling itself, so that anyone who studies the nature and classification of tales will find certain asides and references particularly amusing. It is rare these days that an author will write a piece of fiction which explores on a subtextual level a concept or idea fundamental to the work itself. I have come to wish that more authors could gain the audacity that Gaiman found here.

There is a degree to which this story matches Gaiman's usual monomythic progression from naive outsider to coy insider, which at the outset was my greatest difficulty with the work. The inevitability and redundancy of this trope makes me wish for Gaiman's more eccentric and perverse moments. However, I found in the clever and skilled text a story worth experiencing, and one which matches or exceeds Gaiman's other attempts in the modern fantasy genre.

The story is not as epic or dire as Gaiman's tend to be, and without that there is a loss of urgency in the story. This is not really a deficiency, however, as the playful humor could not cohabitate comfortably with an ever-steepening plot curve.

The work fits into Gaiman's usual mode, exploring the myths and psychologies that most interest him. It may lose some of his fans in that it is less dark and brooding, less hopeless, but this could hardly be counted a loss. Any reader who wants more of the same can re-read his old works. the rest of us may appreciate seeing a master storyteller exploring his form in a new and engaging way.

My Fantasy Book Suggestions

This is a fun folk-tale about love, family, and confidence. The main character is an average guy who is going through life with the unfortunate sobriquet of Fat Charlie. His normal life of office employment with a distasteful manager and planning his wedding to his fiancee (whose mother hates him) changes radically one day. Forced by his fiancee to track down his estranged father for the wedding, Fat Charlie learns that his father has recently died. Not only that, but he learns that his father was also an African god who was known for his stories and for being a prankster. Charlie also learns that he has a brother who has apparently inherited their father's magical powers. The advent of this previously unknown brother into the picture completely upends Charlie's routine life and starts him off on a rollicking adventure.

গেইম্যানের বইগুলো শেষ করার পরে সবসময় একটা ঘোর লাগা শান্তি শান্তি অনুভূতি হয়, সাথে কয়েকদিন মাঝে মাঝেই মুচকি মুচকি হাসি আসে। সবকিছু মিলিয়ে একদম ইউনিক ফিলিংস। মিথ, হিউমার, অন্ধকারের সাথে বুদ্ধিমত্তার লড়াইয়ের অনবদ্য কাহিনি। ফ্যাট চার্লিকে খুবই আপন মনে হয়।

A Digression and a Review:

When I was a child who was much too prone to being serious for her own good, there was a catalpa tree in our backyard. Now, if you don't know what a catalpa tree is, it's worth a Google. Catalpas are beautiful and exotic, with giant leaves we used as "plates" to have fairy-like meals of mulberry and honeysuckle (with mimosa blossoms as a bit of garnish), giant bean pods that hung down like sylvan fingers ready to ensnare an unsuspecting child, white orchid-like flowers that would shower down while we swung on the tire swing below. In its boughs, I could pretend to be Pocahontas, a female Mowgli, or Jana of the Jungle. I would climb up and look down to the ground so far below, filled with delicious terror at how impossibly high I was. This tree seemed massive--big enough to hold all of my dreams and wildest flights of fancy. It, to paraphrase Zora Neale Hurston, seemed to hold dawn and doom in its branches.

As an adult, however, this tree that looms so gargantuan in my imaginary landscape seems small and shrunken, like a wizened grandparent, its limbs not so big, and I realize that, while I felt like I was climbing to the top of a skyscraper, I was barely 10 feet off the ground.

I bring this up because this is the closest approximation I can make to the difference between reading as a child and reading as an adult. As a child, there was a magic in stories, and I'm not talking about pixie dust and wands (although there was certainly some of that). There was a magic in not knowing (or caring) where a story was going. A magic to realizing why, hey, that main character is kind of like me. A magic to finding that you could read the same story over and over and over again and it would never get old and would never be the same story twice, not really. The colors were brighter. The emotions were palpable. There was nothing but possibility. And, yes, there's certainly still magic in the stories I read as an adult, but it's never quite the same, is it? I'm a little more jaded in that, as soon as I can predict where the story is going, I lose a little interest. There's a little more cynicism, a little more impatience with an "I've been here before" narrative, and a little more sadness in knowing that I can never immerse myself in adult stories with the same abandon as that 10 year old reading under the catalpa tree.

Now, I bring this up to explain that this is why I love Neil Gaiman. Gaiman can, more so than any other author, create that childlike awe of story within the adult me without telling a children's story. It's a peculiar and wonderful literary alchemy, this ability to take the adult world, the "real" world, and transform it into a place where one can find the same charm, humor, unpredictability, and enchantment found in the best children's narratives. And Anansi Boys is such a book.

A companion book to American Gods, Anansi Boys, follows the story of Fat Charlie, son of Mr. Nancy, a rascal of a man with a wicked sense of humor, an eye for the ladies, and a knack for purposely embarrassing his introverted, sensitive son. When Mr. Nancy dies, the now grown-up, soon to be married, and tenuously employed Fat Charlie is relieved that his father can never humiliate him again; however he soon finds out that life is not going to settle into a mundane, predictable pattern for him. He learns that his father was Anansi, the trickster spider god of African folklore, and he learns that he has a brother, Spider, who inherited his father's mischievous spirit and magical abilities. It's not long before the reunion between the two brothers breaks out into a serious (and frequently hilarious) case of sibling rivalry, with Spider usurping Fat Charlie's apartment, girlfriend, and life, and Fat Charlie going to extreme lengths to rid himself of his demigod brother.

Anansi Boys lacks the darkness of American Gods and is a much more whimsical, comedic read. Initially, this did cause a bit of a disconnect for me until I gave in to the story without trying to connect it with or hold it up to my expectations of American Gods. While following the adventures of Fat Charlie, I found myself laughing aloud and relishing each twist and turn in the story (as well as looking forward to the humorous "in which" chapter titles). Gaiman's love of story is evident and, as we learn through his depiction of Anansi folktales, the stories we tell and the stories we live are important not just for entertainment, but for creating the world as it should be. And the world as it should be is something as close as possible to a catalpa tree as seen through the eyes of a child--a place where anything and everything is possible, because that's where real magic resides.

Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder