Anansi Boys

Just finished Neil Gaiman's latest, Anansi Boys. I'm slipping because it was out for a whole week before I actually got my hands on a copy. Shows you how busy I've been! Fortunately it was pouring rain and cold out all weekend, and I didn't have anywhere to be so I just stayed curled up on the bed with the cats and read the whole book in one sitting.

That's about all I'm going to say about it. Part of the joy of reading Neil Gaiman's work is the fun of the suprise of it, and I don't want to take that away from you. Although even if I told you, it isn't that cheesy, "Oh crap, the dude's a chick!" or "You mean he's been dead this whole time?" or "What? You mean to tell me it was just a SLED?" kind of gimmick suprise that the plot hinges on. Gaiman's suprises are much more artfully crafted than that.

There's a saying to the effect of, "If you show the gun in act one, it has to go off by act three." For the average writer, the suprise twist would be that the gun didn't go off after all. For Gaiman, the gun would wind up in a yard sale, to be bought by someone who is suicidal, who then exchanges it in a guns-for-toys program, and then gives the toy to an unhappy child in hopes that the child will remember this act of kindness and not have to feel the same way he does when he gets older.

But even that isn't right. Even if his books were without suprises, gripping plots and compelling characters, they'd still be worth reading because his writing is so well crafted, his phrases so beautifully turned, that just the sound of the words put together would make the reading worthwhile.

Which is all just to say read Anansi Boys and everything else Gaiman has ever written. You won't be dissappointed.