Anansi Boys

by Neil Gaiman

Review by Edward Morris

The principle of Neil Gaiman’s, American Gods, is simply that America is not a fertile land for new gods. No humans originally gestated here. Even Native Americans came from other places. However, the settlers brought their gods with them. All the settlers. The scut-work employment the old gods have to find just to stay alive here buggers description.

With the Hugo Award only newly-minted for American Gods,  The Kindly One has stepped up to delight us with a very respectful sequel already. Gaiman’s Anansi Boys opens (natch) with Anansi, the great West African trickster and teacher god, dying in a way that only such a great lover and liver of life possibly could. “He dies all the time,” numerous friends of the god point out. Children of all ages who know the African folktales can only agree.

Anansi Boys concerns two of the spider-god’s undoubtedly multitudinous children, “Fat Charlie” and Spider. Separated at birth by a malady of magicks, the two young men’s lives are rather forcibly shoved back together when their Dad goes to sleep under the earth.

When the story opens, Fat Charlie is saddled with a mother-in-law straight out of Alice Walker, a boss straight out of ‘Office Space’ and a life he doesn’t really want. Spider, his long-lost brother, pops him loose from this imagined stasis across several thousand miles of international waters, the world of spirits (where gods conduct battle and business), the island of St. Andrews, and one vaguely “CSI”-esque flight from justice. Along the way, Spider is shown that demigods can’t have everything, and Fat Charlie grows a spine.

Anansi Boys is a true “Anansi Story”, one that draws back to prehistory into the canon of Tall Tale to show the value of wit, courage and laughter. In an Anansi Story, the wit is often shown through practical jokes, the courage through deception and the laughter at the expense of another.

But the spider-god is us, and we laugh at his antics because, like the man said, comedy is nothing but tragedy plus time. When our legs shake, we pretend we’re doing the proverbial End-Zone dance, and signify, and talk shit just to hide the terror in our own voices.

When the tiger strikes, we yank our own chains from the ground and beat the beast silly. Anansi makes us remember what is noble within ourselves. Right about that point… ain’t nobody laughin’.

Anyone expecting a grand, thundering epic like American Gods will be severely let down. However, there were so many other gods to explore at the close of the former that Anansi Boys is an excellent first of hopefully many branches on a very ambitious tree. So far, Gaiman’s still climbing.

Publisher: William Morrow (Sep, 2005)  

ISBN: 006051518X  Hardcover (352 pages)