Along Came a Spider
Sep. 24th, 2006 11:09 pmAnansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
Gaiman likes to mingle humanity and divinity; even more, he likes to suggest that divinity has a lot to learn from humanity. That's fine with me, I'm not comfortable with unexamined uses of power in the first place, which is in large part why Anansi and most other trickster gods have never really been my cup of tea.
Doing something just because you think it's going to be funny is not, in my mind, a good principle for organising your life, especially if, as a god, you can survive, even laugh off the consequences of practical jokes that do damage to the other people involved. Tricksters are often little more than bullies who use their brains, not their brawn.
So one good thing about Anansi Boys is that the demi-god son of the Trickster learns a little about human compassion, connection and love. But then, that's what happens to boys, in most cases - they grow up to become adult human beings.
Other good things about the book are that it's funny, it reverses the conventions of most European and North American writing that says "if the person's race is not signified, then they must be white," and while the boys are the headliners, there are a goodly number of very well-written, strong and distinctive women who talk to each other about many things other than boys.