I recently had the great pleasure of listening to Neil Gaiman’s “Anansi Boys” on audio.  It was narrated by the inestimable Lenny Henry, who brought voices, personality and magic to the recording - and characters that will always stick with me.

Fat Charlie has a pretty normal life.  He grew up with a father he was sure took great pleasure in embarassing him.  He never much stuck with one job, and has only recently become engaged - which also, in his estimation, had been a fairly unlikely sort of thing to happen.  Things don’t really start to fall apart until he tries to make contact with his father, who he’s avoided for years, and finds out Mr. Nansi is dead.

He finds out other things before the story is all told - things about his boss, his fiance, his father, and a brother he never had.  He meets a menagerie of strange and powerful creatures, one of whom is the bird woman - a decidely not-nice old thing who causes a lot of trouble.

Most importantly, though, Fat Charlie finds out that he has a brother named Spider.  Spider and Fat Charlie are as diametrically opposed as one can squeeze from the words diametrically opposed - and yet, again, there is a lesson to be learned of brotherhood, and just how close siblings can become.

This is a wonderful story, and I give it my highest recommendation.

I suppose it’s no wonder that its an Anansi story…as all stories are Anansi’s — just ask Tiger.

-DNW