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Summary and Reviews of Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Anansi Boys

by Neil Gaiman
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (8):
  • Readers' Rating (2):
  • First Published:
  • Sep 1, 2005, 336 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Oct 2006, 416 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

A mythology for a modern age -- complete with dark prophecy, family dysfunction, mystical deceptions, and killer birds. Not to mention a lime.

Anansi Boys
God is dead. Meet the kids.

When Fat Charlie's dad named something, it stuck. Like calling Fat Charlie "Fat Charlie." Even now, twenty years later, Charlie Nancy can't shake that name, one of the many embarrassing "gifts" his father bestowed -- before he dropped dead on a karaoke stage and ruined Fat Charlie's life.

Mr. Nancy left Fat Charlie things. Things like the tall, good-looking stranger who appears on Charlie's doorstep, who appears to be the brother he never knew. A brother as different from Charlie as night is from day, a brother who's going to show Charlie how to lighten up and have a little fun ... just like Dear Old Dad. And all of a sudden, life starts getting very interesting for Fat Charlie.

Because, you see, Charlie's dad wasn't just any dad. He was Anansi, a trickster god, the spider-god. Anansi is the spirit of rebellion, able to overturn the social order, create wealth out of thin air, and baffle the devil. Some said he could cheat even Death himself.

Returning to the territory he so brilliantly explored in his masterful New York Times bestseller, American Gods, the incomparable Neil Gaiman offers up a work of dazzling ingenuity, a kaleidoscopic journey deep into myth that is at once startling, terrifying, exhilarating, and fiercely funny -- a true wonder of a novel that confirms Stephen King's glowing assessment of the author as "a treasure-house of story, and we are lucky to have him."

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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

With a smaller cast of central characters than American Gods, Gaiman is in his element with Anansi Boys. Stories that retell myths are two-a-penny but stories that flow with the gleeful confidence of Anansi Boys are much rarer...continued

Full Review (526 words)

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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).

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Beyond the Book



Anansi

Anansi is one of the gods in West African mythology, sometimes depicted in human form, sometimes as a spider, sometimes as a hybrid.  He's tricky, greedy and lustful, but he's also good-hearted, lucky, and although often bad, never evil.  The legends are believed to have originated with the Ashanti tribe (from Ghana) but spread through the Akan people (the Akan being a number of different West African tribes linked by a shared language).  As the son of Nyame, the sky god, some myths said that Anansi created the sun, the stars and the moon, and taught mankind how to farm.  He is also considered the King of All Stories.

Anansi himself was only caught once, when he was tricked into fighting a tar-baby - and if that story...

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Read-Alikes

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