Anansi Boys

Title: Anansi Boys
Author: Neil Gaiman
Reader: Lenny Henry
Published: 2005
Genre: Urban fantasy


I've wanted to read Anansi Boys again for a while now -it's been about five years since the last time!- and then remembered that there's an audio book version! And, people, damn it's good! The book is better than I remembered, and Mr. Henry delivers it masterfully. I spent last weekend with earplugs in, listening while cleaning, walking, shopping, pimping a few T-shirts, cooking, everything. That wasn't the original plan, but I didn't want to do the audio book equivalent of putting it down. Which, I guess, is still putting it down.

Fat Charlie Nancy, late of London, is getting married to his girlfriend Rosie, and while making the list of people to invite, she demands that he should invite his estranged father. As it turns out, Fat Charlie's dad has just died all the way over the Atlantic, and the funeral is... now. Fat Charlie -he's not really fat, not anymore, but this kind of names, they stuck- flies over just in time, and so begins his adventure of finding out so many strange things about his family. Including his brother: otherwise the name of the book would be Anansi Boy, wouldn't it?


   'Sorry about that,' he said to the spider, and, white wine slooshing comfortably around inside him, he said it aloud. 
   He put the card and the tumbler down on a cracked flagstone, and he lifted the tumbler, and waited for the spider to scuttle away. Instead, it simply sat, unmoving, on the face of the cheerful cartoon teddy bear on the birthday card. The man and the spider regarded each other.
   Something that Mrs Higgler said came to him then, and the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. 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.'
   The spider remained where it was, and raised one leg, almost as if it was thinking it over, then it scuttled across the flagstone towards the hedge, and was gone.


Reading that, I can still hear Mr. Henry's voice in my head. Nice.