It's been a year since I read Anansi Boys. I can still remember the anticipation of it. I waited two weeks to buy it, two whole weeks after its release date. In those two weeks I would go into bookstores, pick up a copy, fan the pages, sigh heavily and put it back in the stack. On the 8th, I would say to myself, because that was the night when I would wait in a line with 649 other people, the night when I would buy this book about gods in the hallway of a church, when I would get the book, meet the man himself, and even, though I didn't know it yet, touch his fancy fountain pen.

Neil Gaiman is one of those people you either love or hate (and, odds are, if you've heard of him, you love him). In principle, I adore him and think he can do no wrong. He wrote some Books of Magic that I read at an impressionable age, things that I have grown around, the way bonsai trees will grow around the things you use to bend them. He also wrote what I think is the best sentence ever, in the Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish. Even when I don't love a story (I didn't love Neverwhere as much as I had wanted to, for example), I still love the platonic ideal of Neil Gaiman. I will still eventually buy his every word, or at least read them.

As I finally left the event, signed book in my hand, my heart filled with delight that Gaiman was just as charming and amusing as I had imagined he would be, I cracked open my book, confident that it, too, would live up to the lofty expectations I had of it. And there are no mixed feelings about Anansi Boys.

The book starts with a death. When Fat Charlie's father dies, it leads to the discovery that a) his father was the trickster god Anansi and b) he has a brother, named Spider. The ensuing novel has Charlie coming to terms with both ideas.

On one level, it is a book about how our family expectations can suffocate us. Fat Charlie picked up his nickname as a boy, and he can't escape it, even though he isn't even fat anymore. Once someone hears the nickname, he is forever "Fat Charlie" to them. And so, Charlie Nancy still sees himself as a fat, shy little boy, tormented and a little jealous of people who seem capable of living bigger, less ordinary, fearless lives. His rediscovered brother is just such a person, and the first impression he leaves on Charlie is a whirlwind of wine, women and song. It's nothing less than embarassing for Charlie.

For Fat Charlie, the story is about creating and recreating one's self. With the arrival of his brother and the revelations about his father, Charlie's assumptions about himself are challenged. Then circumstances intervene, and Charlie is confronted with the need to take actions that would once have been inconceivable. Mortifying. But urgently necessary. Having talent isn't everthing, having gifts isn't everything - one needs the courage to use them. And, perhaps, one is obliged to use whatever gifts he or she has.