(no subject)
The last two days I was in Berlin, for professional reasons, but I had ample time to exploit the beautiful weather. And the museums never get old. There is a magnificent Goya exhibition on right now, and they transferred the bust of Nefertiti from Charlottenburg to the Antikensammlung on the Museumsinsel, so that alone took care of many delighted hours. Well, in some parts shaken hours, because of course Goya’s drawings of war and misery have a particular resonance these days.
Visiting the Berlin bookstores yielded two treasures - the new Terry Prattchet, Thud, and the new Neil Gaiman novel, Anansi Boys. Which isn’t supposed to be sold until September 20, so I could hardly believe my eyes and grabbed it right away, before it could wonder off to the library of dreams again. Not many spoilers, but just to be on the safe side, I’ll hide my review under a cut:
It’s definitely the most light hearted thing he wrote since co-writing Good Omens with Pterry. Of course this being N.G. means there is still creepiness and bloodshed around, which is as it should be. For this novel does hits one particular kink of mine - it both works as a novel and as a meta treatise on storytelling. (The best way this happens in the Gaiman oeuvre is in the two Shakespeare stories within the Sandman saga, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest.) The explanation of the Tiger-Anansi feud and just what Anansi brought to storytelling (short version: he mixed wit into the horror) works on several obvious levels. For those of you versed in the more famous writers of comics, I can’t help picturing Frank Miller as Tiger now.*g*
Anansi the trickster himself, who showed up in American Gods, is kept almost entirely off stage here, though like Richard the Lionheart in Robin Hood movies, he provides the impetus for a lot of the action. The hero, his son Charlie, could share a tale or two with Shadow on how being the son of a God really can ruin your life as well as provide you with self-discovery and new élan, though this being a light hearted tale, Charlie doesn’t have to get crucified. He just loses his flat, job and fiancée to his previously unknown brother Spider, who is the charmer, trickster and con man to Charlie’s straight man, the Marquis de Carabas to his Richard Mayhew, the Wednesday to his Shadow… you get the picture. Except not exactly, because Spider doesn’t really have any bad intentions or long term manipulative goals, and ends up paying a horrible price for the careless want, take, have act. At the same time, Charlie does what Richard and Shadow do as well and what heroes are want to do when couples with tricksters after losing it all - grows, picks up a bit of that laissez faire, and ends up better for knowing that other world.
In an interview, Gaiman once said that some stories feel male and some female to him (for example, within Sandman “A Game of You” is female "Preludes and Nocturnes” is male; his previous book, Coraline with its heroine, female nemesis (the “other mother”) and clever cat was decidedly female, and Anansi Boys does feel male. There is a bit of a boys’ own yarn here, and I don’t mean that negatively - it contributes to the charme of this particular book. If I ever find the time for a real essay, I might reflect on how Coraline’s nightmare is to find her parents not really her parents and the mother figure as the ultimate nemesis to be defeated because she wants to keep you a child, whereas Charlie’s nightmare is finding out that someone lives your life with far more ease and fun than you do, and what that says about girls and boys (Charlie, despite being well off age, is really a boy as the title indicates, as is Spider in a different way - they never became adults) and the way Gaiman depicts them.
As far as the bad guys are concerned, there is a J.K. Rowling parallel here - the nominal chief bad guy, Tiger, isn’t nearly as chilling and impressive as the secondary villainess, Bird, who must rank as one of Neil Gaiman’s most frightening creations. Brrrr. In a good way. If there is fanfic based on this novel, I predict she will be in it.
Now, off to read it again…
Visiting the Berlin bookstores yielded two treasures - the new Terry Prattchet, Thud, and the new Neil Gaiman novel, Anansi Boys. Which isn’t supposed to be sold until September 20, so I could hardly believe my eyes and grabbed it right away, before it could wonder off to the library of dreams again. Not many spoilers, but just to be on the safe side, I’ll hide my review under a cut:
It’s definitely the most light hearted thing he wrote since co-writing Good Omens with Pterry. Of course this being N.G. means there is still creepiness and bloodshed around, which is as it should be. For this novel does hits one particular kink of mine - it both works as a novel and as a meta treatise on storytelling. (The best way this happens in the Gaiman oeuvre is in the two Shakespeare stories within the Sandman saga, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest.) The explanation of the Tiger-Anansi feud and just what Anansi brought to storytelling (short version: he mixed wit into the horror) works on several obvious levels. For those of you versed in the more famous writers of comics, I can’t help picturing Frank Miller as Tiger now.*g*
Anansi the trickster himself, who showed up in American Gods, is kept almost entirely off stage here, though like Richard the Lionheart in Robin Hood movies, he provides the impetus for a lot of the action. The hero, his son Charlie, could share a tale or two with Shadow on how being the son of a God really can ruin your life as well as provide you with self-discovery and new élan, though this being a light hearted tale, Charlie doesn’t have to get crucified. He just loses his flat, job and fiancée to his previously unknown brother Spider, who is the charmer, trickster and con man to Charlie’s straight man, the Marquis de Carabas to his Richard Mayhew, the Wednesday to his Shadow… you get the picture. Except not exactly, because Spider doesn’t really have any bad intentions or long term manipulative goals, and ends up paying a horrible price for the careless want, take, have act. At the same time, Charlie does what Richard and Shadow do as well and what heroes are want to do when couples with tricksters after losing it all - grows, picks up a bit of that laissez faire, and ends up better for knowing that other world.
In an interview, Gaiman once said that some stories feel male and some female to him (for example, within Sandman “A Game of You” is female "Preludes and Nocturnes” is male; his previous book, Coraline with its heroine, female nemesis (the “other mother”) and clever cat was decidedly female, and Anansi Boys does feel male. There is a bit of a boys’ own yarn here, and I don’t mean that negatively - it contributes to the charme of this particular book. If I ever find the time for a real essay, I might reflect on how Coraline’s nightmare is to find her parents not really her parents and the mother figure as the ultimate nemesis to be defeated because she wants to keep you a child, whereas Charlie’s nightmare is finding out that someone lives your life with far more ease and fun than you do, and what that says about girls and boys (Charlie, despite being well off age, is really a boy as the title indicates, as is Spider in a different way - they never became adults) and the way Gaiman depicts them.
As far as the bad guys are concerned, there is a J.K. Rowling parallel here - the nominal chief bad guy, Tiger, isn’t nearly as chilling and impressive as the secondary villainess, Bird, who must rank as one of Neil Gaiman’s most frightening creations. Brrrr. In a good way. If there is fanfic based on this novel, I predict she will be in it.
Now, off to read it again…