2006 Book 1

"Anansi Boys" by Neil Gaiman

What a way to start the New Year. A brand new Gaiman book for Xmas (thanks, Michael!!) and I polished this one off in about two days. It's sort of a companion piece to "American Gods", a 'stars' Fat Charlie, a US-born Englishman (of Jamaican ancestry, just by the by) finding out after the death of his father that a) he has a brother and b) his dad was a god. He was, in fact, Anansi the Spider God of African mythology. As a cultural note, Anansi was a trickster and joker, similar to the Norse Loki, but less of a prick about it. :) If you want to know more, check out the Wikipedia link.

Rarely have I enjoyed the character arcs of a novel so much as I did with "Anansi Boys", especially Fat Charlie and his brother Spider's. The bad guy(s) are enjoyably, palpably creepy and the humour flashes from between the pages. The narrative is smooth as silk and one of the more enjoyable novels I've read in recent memory.

Four and a half embarassing fathers out of five.