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“Deliciously compulsive . . . Grade: A.” — Washington Post

“Ebullient . . . The Gaiman faithful will devour it gratefully.” — Sacramento Bee

“Somehow manages to be both really scary and really funny at the same time.” — Newsweek

“Witty and engaging.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune

“The most accomplished of Gaiman’s novels . . . Urbane and sophisticated.” — Time Out London

“A clever, quick-witted book.” — Oklahoma City Oklahoman

“A remarkably funny book.” — Toronto Star

“A madcap, screwball world that is partly absurd, occassionally humane and always entertaining.” — Pittsburgh Tribune

“Genre-busting . . . very creative and very funny. Grade: A-” — Christian Science Monitor

“An off-kilter blend of reality and fantasy.” — Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“A droll comedy of manners with elements of mystery, thriller and romance thrown in . . . Charming.” — Vancouver Sun

“Gaiman hardwires his comedy of misrule with a crackpot energy that, when successfully channelled, lights up the imagination.” — Sunday Times (London)

“A thoughtful, atmospheric novel.” — London Times

“Ebullient . . . ingenious . . . enormously entertaining throughout.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Another lovely story as only Gaiman can tell it; necessary and recommended.” — Library Journal

“[Gaiman is] the folksy, witty, foolishly wise narrator to perfection.” — Booklist (starred review)

“Funny and subversive . . . Gaiman’s mastery of language carries the reader through to a satisfying conclusion.” — USA Today

“Delightful, funny and affecting . . . the literary equivalent of a hole in one.” — Washington Post Book World

“Readers who enjoyed American Gods . . . will fall madly in love with ANANSI BOYS.” — St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Gaiman at his best.” — Rocky Mountain News

“A welterweight boxer of a book -- light on its feet, but capable of delivering a punch.” — Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“ANANSI BOYS makes an incredible read.” — Times Leader

“[Gaiman] gives his flair for comedy free rein without losing his appreciation for the darker aspects of world mythology.” — San Francisco Chronicle

“A very accomplished comic novel.” — Daily Telegraph (London)

“A hybrid of folk tale and farce that freely partakes of the comic wealth in each.” — Salon.com

“Another great work from Neil Gaiman.” — Toronto Star

“Darkly funny and heartwarming to the end, this book is an addictive read not easily forgotten.” — School Library Journal

One of fiction's most audaciously original talents, Neil Gaiman now gives us 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."

Neil Gaiman is the New York Times bestselling and multi-award winning author and creator of many beloved books, graphic novels, short stories, film, television and theatre for all ages. He is the recipient of the Newbery and Carnegie Medals, and many Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner Awards. Neil has adapted many of his works to television series, including Good Omens (co-written with Terry Pratchett) and The Sandman. He is a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR and Professor in the Arts at Bard College. For a lot more about his work, please visit: https://www.neilgaiman.com/

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.