Product Description

Fat Charlie Nancy's normal life ended the moment his father dropped dead on a Florida karaoke stage. Charlie didn't know his dad was a god. And he never knew he had a brother.

Now brother Spider's on his doorstep—about to make Fat Charlie's life more interesting . . . and a lot more dangerous.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4172 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-01
• Released on: 2006-09-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 416 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. If readers found the Sandman series creator's last novel, American Gods, hard to classify, they will be equally nonplussed—and equally entertained—by this brilliant mingling of the mundane and the fantastic. "Fat Charlie" Nancy leads a life of comfortable workaholism in London, with a stressful agenting job he doesn't much like, and a pleasant fiancée, Rosie. When Charlie learns of the death of his estranged father in Florida, he attends the funeral and learns two facts that turn his well-ordered existence upside-down: that his father was a human form of Anansi, the African trickster god, and that he has a brother, Spider, who has inherited some of their father's godlike abilities. Spider comes to visit Charlie and gets him fired from his job, steals his fiancée, and is instrumental in having him arrested for embezzlement and suspected of murder. When Charlie resorts to magic to get rid of Spider, who's selfish and unthinking rather than evil, things begin to go very badly for just about everyone. Other characters—including Charlie's malevolent boss, Grahame Coats ("an albino ferret in an expensive suit"), witches, police and some of the folk from American Gods—are expertly woven into Gaiman's rich myth, which plays off the African folk tales in which Anansi stars. But it's Gaiman's focus on Charlie and Charlie's attempts to return to normalcy that make the story so winning—along with gleeful, hurtling prose.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–Charles Fat Charlie Nancy leads a normal, boring existence in London. However, when he calls the U.S. to invite his estranged father to his wedding, he learns that the man just died. After jetting off to Florida for the funeral, Charlie not only discovers a brother he didn't know he had, but also learns that his father was the West African trickster god, Anansi. Charlie's brother, who possesses his own magical powers, later visits him at home and spins Charlie's life out of control, getting him fired, sleeping with his fiancée, and even getting him arrested for a white-collar crime. Charlie fights back with assistance from other gods, and that's when the real trouble begins. They lead the brothers into adventures that are at times scary or downright hysterical. At first Charlie is overwhelmed by this new world, but he is Anansi's son and shows just as much flair for trickery as his brother. With its quirky, inventive fantasy, this is a real treat for Gaiman's fans. Here, he writes with a fuller sense of character. Focusing on a smaller cast gives him the room to breathe life into these figures. Anansi is also a story about fathers, sons, and brothers and how difficult it can be to get along even when they are so similar. Darkly funny and heartwarming to the end, this book is an addictive read not easily forgotten.–Matthew L. Moffett, Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
With Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman's delightful, funny and affecting new novel, the bestselling author has scored the literary equivalent of a hole in one, employing the kind of self-assured storytelling that makes it all look so easy. One can imagine Gaiman's legion of fans putting down the book and rushing en masse to pen their own riffs on traditional folklore and contemporary pop culture. But it's hard to imagine anyone topping Anansi Boys, if only because it's a tall tale to end all tall tales, inspired by the trickiest of all trickster gods, Anansi the Spider, whose origins lie in Ghana.

Tales of the West African deity traveled with slaves to North America, where the clever spider became the anthropomorphic figure known as Aunt Nancy, Anancy, or Bre'r Ananse (a counterpart to Bre'r Rabbit, another African American trickster). In Gaiman's last full-length novel, American Gods, Anansi made an appearance as the (mostly) human Mr. Nancy. In Anansi Boys, Mr. Nancy cedes center stage to his sons, Fat Charlie and Spider. As the novel's catchphrase puts it, "God is dead. Meet the kids."

Only Anansi isn't exactly God; he's a god, sort of the god next door: "In the old stories, Anansi lives just like you do or I do, in his house. He is greedy, of course, and lustful, and tricky, and full of lies. And he is good-hearted, and lucky, and sometimes even honest. Sometimes he is good, sometimes he is bad. He is never evil. Mostly, you are on Anansi's side. This is because Anansi owns all the stories." Anansi isn't exactly dead, either, though it's true that Fat Charlie's troubles begin when he attends his estranged father's burial. Fat Charlie "was only ever fat for a handful of years. . . . But the name Fat Charlie clung to him, like chewing gum to the sole of a tennis shoe." He grew up in Florida but now lives in London, where he is engaged to a nice girl named Rosie, who won't sleep with him until after they're married. He works for the loathsome, weaselly Grahame Coats, a talent agent who for years has been fleecing his clients, including the delectable Maeve Livingstone, widow of Morris Livingstone, "once the most famous short Yorkshire comedian in Britain."

Fat Charlie's pre-marital and career woes work in tandem with his chronic insecurity and a constant, slow-burning sense of embarrassment, guaranteeing that nothing very exciting will ever happen to him -- until, that is, he goes to Florida for Mr. Nancy's funeral.

Afterwards, Charlie visits some family friends, four little old ladies who just happen to be witches. The most formidable of these is Mrs. Dunwiddy: "As a boy, Fat Charlie had imagined Mrs. Dunwiddy in Equatorial Africa, peering disapprovingly through her thick spectacles at the newly-erect hominids. 'Keep out of my front yard,' she would tell a recently evolved and rather nervous specimen of Homo habilis, 'or I going to belt you around your ear-hole, I tell you.' "

There's also Mrs. Higgler, who tells Fat Charlie that his father was a god.

" 'He was not a god. He was my dad.'

" 'You can be both,' she said. 'It happens.' "

And Mrs. Higgler informs Fat Charlie that, if he wants to see the brother he never knew he had, all he has to do is tell a spider. Charlie, who obviously never learned that it is extremely unwise to scoff at witchy old ladies, returns to London and rescues a spider from his bathtub. Perhaps it was the devil in him. Probably it was the alcohol. " 'If you see my brother,' said Fat Charlie to the spider, 'tell him he ought to come by and say hello.' " And of course, his brother -- nicknamed Spider -- does just that.

Spider is everything Charlie is not: lucky, debonair, smoothly confident, possessed of their father's silver tongue and gift for wooing women. Before you can say ouch, Spider has stolen his brother's job, his fiancée, the best room in Fat Charlie's house. Rosie doesn't just tumble into Spider's arms: She tumbles into bed with him and shows few signs of ever getting out again. Worse, the awful Grahame Coats frames Fat Charlie for embezzlement and has him thrown in jail.

Now, you might think that none of this could possibly be Fat Charlie's fault. But you would be wrong. He summoned Spider; now he realizes he has to get rid of him. Fat Charlie returns to Florida and the four old ladies, who concoct a ritual that gains him entry to the spirit world where totemic animal-gods dwell.

And that's when things get really interesting.

Gaiman first came to prominence in the late 1980s with The Sandman, the brilliant series that helped reinvent comics and put graphic novels on the map as Literature with a capital L. His previous full-length books, while wildly popular, are hit-or-miss, hobbled by epic ambitions that can occasionally seem pretentious and clever conceits that overpower other concerns such as characterization and pacing.

In Anansi Boys, he gets it all right: Here, Gaiman's storytelling instincts are as remarkable and assured as Anansi's own. As Fat Charlie frantically attempts to undo the damage he's caused and save his brother Spider, and the world, from the forces he's unwittingly loosed, Anansi Boys becomes darker, richer, wiser than any of Gaiman's earlier works.

Here's old Mr. Nancy, in his ghostly guise: " 'Now, Anansi stories, they have wit and trickery and wisdom. Now, all over the world, all of the people they aren't just thinking of hunting and being hunted any more. Now they're starting to think their way out of problems -- sometimes thinking their way into worse problems. They still need to keep their bellies full, but now they're trying to figure out how to do it without working -- and that's the point where people start using their heads. . . . That's when they start to make the world.' "

Lewis Hyde titled his noted study of the trickster mythos Trickster Makes This World. With Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman has made it his own world, too, and given readers a first-class ticket for the journey there.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Hand
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

Mythology for the modern age, gods with dysfunctional families
Gaiman did it again. Delighted me thoroughly and completely in a most satisfying manner. Had me chuckling through the day and left me lying in bed with a smile on my face (and my husband reading Murakami in equal pleasure beside me, so wipe that smirk off your face. We only invite authors in covers under the covers with us. Kinky, we're not.)

I don't rightly recall which Gaiman was my first, though I was the first in the family to discover him. Devoured Good Omens, Neverwhere, Smoke and Mirrors and Stardust with equal abandon and delight. Nearly wept with joy when American Gods came out. Whipped through Coraline in a skinny minute. Bought Anansi Boys pre publication and had it in my hot little hands the day it came out-- only to have it snatched away by Boyczuk, who we have raised right-- he likes Gaiman. (Gaiman's blog is one that the lad checks daily and since he knows his father and I are fans, he'll give us updates on what's happening in Gaiman-land. Filming is just about concluded on Stardust with Michelle Pheifer and Robert DiNero for starters-- Gaiman says the bits he's seen are like nothing he's seen before. I'm pumped!) Then the book was taken over by mr czuk, and elder brother, and shoveled into some corner of the house where it languished for far too long. I finally dug it out from a shelf in the guest room, where it had slid behind a John Irving and a Christopher Moore. I sent it up to the mountains in a box of hardbacks, knowing that I had too big a TBR pile in Charleston, but that at the cabin, someday this summer I'd finish whatever book I brought up with me, then be able to curl up with my sweet Neil and read uninterrupted. Which I did, and I did. Ah bliss.

So now on to the book, or back where I started. Everyone and his or her brother (including mine) has probably read this by now. Gaiman doesn't sit around unread on fans' shelves for long, except with the rare (read "such as happened to me") mishap. Mythology for the modern age, gods with dysfunctional families-- wonderful. Even the liner notes had me grinning like a fool. "God is dead. Meet the kids." I followed poor sap Charlie Nancy (aka Fat Charlie) through his embarrassing childhood, and dull as dishwater (except for do-good Rosie) life as an accountant. Saw him get mixed up in stuff he was too dense to even pick up on, deal with the death of a parent he despised, discover Spider--a dashing and daring previously unknown brother, and then see his life go to a proverbial hell in a hand basket. All told with clarity, humor and a wit that is utterly delightful. Into this mix, introduce aging and sometimes angry gods, legends of the trickster Anansi and you're off and running. Sometimes, the sheer ridiculousness of it was enough to carry me along, other times the plot ran away with me and made me miss my tea. All in all, it was a fun day of reading Mr Gaiman provided me with. (And I still think him to be utterly charming in interviews and utterly darling in pictures. Plus, he likes BookCrossing! Any wonder why he is one of my favorite authors?)

Neil Gaiman does it again
Anansi Boys tells the story about a man named Fat Charlie Nancy, who leads a normal if not boring life. He works for an awful man named Grahme Coats. He is engaged to a very nice woman named Rosie. Rosies mom hates Charlie. He and Rosie are in the process of planning their wedding when Charlie gets a call that his father died. He flys out to the funeral and find out information that he never knew. One is that his father was a God and the other is that he has a brother named Spider. Spider comes into his life and turns it upside down and Charlie tries to make sense of everything. This book contains magic, murder, love, deception, along with a bit of singing and dancing. This is a fun and well written book that I highly recommend.

Nice way to escape reality for a bit
Fat Charlie was dubbed so by his dad when just a chubby child. Unfortunately, even though he shed the pounds the name stuck. Many years later Fat Charlie is living an unremarkable life, with a crappy job and a girlfriend who insists on making him "wait until marriage". When Charlie's dad dies he learns some amazingly unbelieveable things and his boring life is forever changed.

This one has a lot of wit and was just offbeat enough to hold my attention. Charlie is an every-guy sort of character who is easy to like as he bumbles his way through some very odd changes in his life. The book is populated with interesting people and takes a lot of twists and turns that aren't expected. Gaiman wrote it and it reads like a twisted fairy-tale so how can you go wrong with that?