Anansi Boys — Neil Gaiman
William Morrow
2005
Rating:


As the auteur of "The Sandman" graphic novels and one of the greatest fantasy writers currently working in the medium, there's a tremendous amount of love for Neil Gaiman. So when Gaiman stumbles, which is rare, it's positively heartbreaking.

Gaiman's latest, "Anansi Boys," is sub-par by the master's high standards despite a fantastic idea that's along the same lines as "American Gods."

After his father dies, embarrassment-prone Fat Charlie Nancy (who hasn't been fat in years) discovers that he was the son of Anansi, the African spider god of stories, and that his brother Spider, a brother he never knew existed, received all of Anansi's gifts. Spider enters Fat Charlie's life and quickly sets about ruining it — Spider steals away Fat Charlie's fiancιe Rosie and tells his boss Grahame Coats that he has discovered his offshore accounts, causing Fat Charlie to be framed for embezzling and investigated by Detective Constable Daisy. Fed up, Charlie turns to the other animal gods Anansi once fooled for help, and immediately regrets his decision.

At one point, the narrator of this modern folk tale says that the stories of Anansi were filled with "wit and trickery and wisdom." There's certainly plenty of wit and trickery here, mostly provided by the distinctive "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"-esque narrative voice, but there's no discernible wisdom. As the self-consciously contrived plot meanders from point to point and genre to genre, it fails to convey a convincing moral or reason for what befalls Charlie and Spider.

The story is at its strongest in the opening two chapters, which seem to be setting up a "Big Fish"-like tale of a father-son disconnect with the added bonus of an American god for magic-realism. Fat Charlie's (perceived) humiliations as a child — Fat Charlie is tricked into going to school on President's Day dressed as Taft, is taken to the ocean to search for mermaids, and stands ashamed as his father serenades his dying mother with a New Orleans jazz band — are among the story's finest moments.

Fat Charlie's perception of these acts as mean-spiritedly embarrassing shows a lack of faith that the story targets to illuminate American notions of patriotism, pop culture and spirituality. The story never manages to shake the feeling that it would have been better off if Fat Charlie looked into his father's fabulist life and found the morality behind his dark Aesop's fables that ask storylisteners to entertain and cultivate myth over reason rather than forcing Fat Charlie to deal with Spider.

Promise remains when Spider shows up to shake up Fat Charlie's world. This scenario is even more familiar than the set-up — the black sheep comes home to roost, so to speak, and seemingly ruins the reserved brother's life but really makes it better — but because there's the possibility of god-like manifestations of miracles, there's still interest to be had. But there turns out to be little practical magic. There are a few Jedi mind tricks where Spider bends people and reality to his will, but Spider disappointingly isn't taken to his father's shenanigans or parable-telling, leaving the black sheep scenario rote.

"Stories are webs," the narrator says, "interconnected, strand to strand, and you follow each story to the center, because the center is the end." To that end, most of the second act finds the narrative frantically weaving, which ends up with a plot that feels contrived rather than satisfyingly dense. There's certainly something impressive about the "Short Cuts" connections, but it only gets the story so far.

"Each person is a strand of story," the narrator also says, which also goes a long way toward explaining why the plot feels so superficial. The characters, mere pawns on the story's chessboard, are only sketched skin deep and their development seems forced upon them in the end.

Fat Charlie certainly has an Arthur Dent feel about him as an average (maybe even below average) man dealing with extraordinary circumstances and emerging galvanized from the flame. Yet, Fat Charlie is never more interesting than when he's being humiliated at the beginning. The more Fat Charlie delves into the mythical aspects of his history, encountering the anthropomorphic manifestations of gods like Tiger and Bird, the less interesting he becomes, mostly because he accepts the world he has entered too willingly. The arc of Fat Charlie's story is meant to find him embracing the god-like abilities that were thought to only be possessed by Spider, while Spider becomes increasingly human. Both things eventually happen, but with too much suddenness for it to be satisfying.

There's a bounty of promise to a son discovering his god-like heritage, but this story chooses instead to follow less interesting plot culs-de-sac that lack heart and whimsy, storytelling characteristics that Gaiman usually uses with aplomb.

Posted Monday, September 19, 2005

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/book//anansi.boys