Honeyed Words: Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman · 15 June 2007

It begins, as most things begin, with a song

And if you believe Neil Gaiman, it was a big ole' groovy song, the kind you hear from the street bands in New Orleans, the kind that makes the pasty tourists strap a washboard over their button down shirt and strum on it with a spoon (not that I've ever seen this happen of course). There have been times I've felt the power of a song, swaying to the soulful wail of a guitar or weeping to the mellow hum of an oboe.

Sometimes though, someone changes the radio station, and you can't hear the song you're supposed to hear anymore. And instead of striding along to the beat, you shuffle worriedly, afraid you're taking a wrong step.

If you're Fat Charlie Nancy, you also worry whether anyone is watching you, and whether they can tell you're profoundly and innately embarrassed by your dad, who across the hall is strutting his stuff like his song is being sung by The Rolling Stones as they play the Garden in New York City to a crowd of thousands.

When Fat Charlie's dad dies, he's saddened, and of course embarrassed, but he takes the long flight home, an American expatriate returning from London to Florida, and attends the funeral. He shuffles through the motions, unsure of how to make his peace with a father he'd been avoiding for years, then packs up a few mementos and heads home, but not without discovering his father was a god, Anansi the spider, the trickster, the story-teller and father of his brother Spider.

Adrift in his mediocre life, Fat Charlie is a sympathetic character. I think there's a little part of everyone that worries we don't take enough risks, don't put ourselves out in the world as much as we should, and push our own personal boundaries. Fat Charlie speaks to that part of us, and through his plodding, mundanity screams to us not to let ignore that worry, lest we become complacent.

When Fat Charlie offhandedly summons his brother Spider for a family reunion, we secretly cheer. You see, we've got a suspicion that Spider inherited the cool, suave, demeanor of their father, just like he inherited the god powers.

When Spider arrives, Gaiman revs up the melody of the song that is this story. He weaves in the traditions of old myth that he introduced in American Gods and sets the brothers on a path that brings them in touch with their heritage.

Though gods are serious business with serious powers, Gaiman takes care to keep the tone of this book lighter than American Gods. All the stories in it are Anansi stories.

Now, Anansi stories, they have wit and trickery and wisdom. Now, all over the world, all of the people, they aren't just thinking about hunting and being hunted. Now they're starting to think their way out of problems- sometimes thinking their way into worse problems. . . People respond to the stories. They tell them themselves. The stories spread, and as people tell them, the stories change the tellers.

I thought Gaiman did an excellent job with the theme of the book. He took the premise that a song or a story creates reality, and he set the characters on their own merry tune. As the characters developed confidence in living to their own beat, their lives improved. Gaiman created dramatic tension by throwing in an old god rivalry, and leaving Anansi’s heirs to settle it.

There’s much good to be said about this book (people who have read it will appreciate the starfish photograph as an illustration of one of the many tangents of the story that I could praise), but there were two parts of the story that fell flat for me.

The human bad guy was a bit too bad. You expect that a god may be one dimensional, an intangible virtue or flaw personified, but it's harder to swallow a one dimensional human character. While I’m quite sure that there are evil people in the world, the bad guy here didn’t even appreciate the delicious irony of being imprisoned in an exile of his own making with a superbly stocked wine cellar. I suppose Gaiman may have been trying to illustrate how the will of the gods superimposes itself on average people, but as the gods were walking around and acting for themselves, it seemed redundant and overdone. Just one redeeming quality, that’s all I ask for!

The other part of the story that I didn’t think worked exceptionally well was Spider’s romantic transformation. We’re all rooting for Fat Charlie to become a bit more like Spider, but it seems odd that Spider would seek to emulate Fat Charlie after ridiculing the banality of his life. The idea of a transformation has merit, especially in the context of the starfish metaphor, but I thought it was something that needed fleshing out in order to match the strength of the rest of the story.

As with American Gods (the only other book I’ve read by Neil Gaiman) this book gave me a lot to think about. I’d highly recommend it as an introductory book to Gaiman if you’re considering reading American Gods and are intimidated by its length or darker subject matter, or if you’re interested in African folklore. Anansi Boys is at heart a joyous celebration of life via the singing of a song meant to be belted out at full volume.

This book was reviewed for the 2007 Once Upon a Time Challenge.