Jeanette's Reviews > Anansi Boys

Awkward, allergic to public attention, unassuming and prone to bad luck, Fat Charlie Nancy is an unlikely hero hiding a rare talent. But when his fiance insists that he invite his exuberant and embarrassing father to their upcoming wedding, only to find himself flying across the Atlantic to his father's funeral, things begin to spiral out of control and he discovers a side to himself he never knew.

Once I got past the teeth gritting, wincingly embarrassing predicaments that Fat Charlie finds himself in at the beginning of the book, and Charlie began to take hold of his own destiny, I rather enjoyed Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys. Gaiman, with a deft humour, brings African and Caribbean stories and myths of the trickster Spider god Anansi to life in the context of modern America and Britain. With great characters and a plot with surprising twists and turns (and some strange coincidences), the story comes to a gripping and satisfying conclusion.

This is a fantasy book about being human, relationships and finding one's destiny mixed up with modern economic realities, awkward family relationships and a modern reprisal of the animistic beliefs and the supernatural.