Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

I've never read Neil Gaiman, but I sure will now! I really enjoyed his writing style, very different them what I'm used to. I've never read American Gods, but I figured that I should look at it after reading it's companion.

This was most definitely modern day fantasy at ti's best. A dysfunctional family, strange important things (a lime) and non-typical fantasy storytelling (African Gods are not Elves.)
At first I didn't know if I'd like a book revolving around African mythology, I like to revolve around the more western fantasy takes. But I was pleasantly surprised. In fact after the book I found myself looking up the Spider and his friends, er, enemies...

One thing that I was very surprised by, was the fact that, well, the characters were African American, but, you don't get told that right away, you figure it out, and boy, does it make you really think about yourself, do we assign a race to characters without even thinking? And let's face it, most fantasy books revolve around Caucasian characters, it's interesting that I would start off reading the book with this perception without even thinking about it. I'll think twice from now on. But again a clever thing you are Neil.

I found the relationships interesting, Neil focuses on the brother/son father relationships, yet, in this book, they are so alike yet so different. Charlie doesn't even know about his fathers death until he tries to invite him to his wedding (one he's not even crazy about) and thus finds out he's just died. This already shows us how the family is disconnected. Then, he finds out about an estranged "brother", this family has all readily got some interesting problems. The twists in this book made it very funny and witty at times. Spider pretty much tries to ruin Charlies life, the opposite of what we would expect from a brother, from "family". Neil really gets the reader to question relationships. The whole book in fact is like a family story, told in a humours way and mixed with a dash of fantasy to make it even more interesting. Neil does a great job playing with themes and makes this novel hard to classify. His tone is very simplistic, but somehow he gets you into the story.

Gaiman makes it easy for us to feel for Charlie. His whole life is "spun" out of control after his father's death. There's a lot of family themes here, for one, much like our ourselves, Charlie is always embarrassed by his father. We can relate because who hasn't been embarrassed by their parents before? Even when his father dies, Charlie is embarrassed by the way his father passed on. Flirting with girls in a bar. What a way to go. His father call thin Charlie, "Fat Charlie" and it sticks his whole life, a reminder of his father's embarrassing ways. We learn later of course why it stuck since his father was gifted with naming things (something he stole from Tiger) but regardless it reminds us of the pet names our parents use for us, Gaiman does a great job sneaking in things his readers can relate to and appreciate.

I really liked Anansi Boys, the writing style was so different, so "fresh" in my opinion. I'll track down some more Neil after this.