« Virgina = Big Brother? | Main | I'm a musician! »
April 19, 2006
Abandoning Neil Gaiman
Categories: Words
I am officially giving up trying to read Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys. I bought this book last November. I was able to have it signed by Gaiman at his Joseph-Beth Booksellers appearance. It's been on my bedside table since then. I've started this book twice. Both times I get maybe 150 pages into it before not really wanting to pick it up again.
The problem I have with this book is just that it's so familiar. I haven't read a ton of Gaiman -- a lot of the Sandman comics, Neverwhere and American Gods, but Anansi Boys seems like it fits the Gaiman pattern to a T: normal guy finds out he has some connection to a larger, mysterious and magical world that most people do not or cannot notice (this connection is often familial), that world intrudes on his life, things get really messed up for him in the process, and then there is a fairly major magical event as the climax where the protagonist learns something about this magical world and himself in the process. Then, things go back to normal, but the protagonist's life is never quite the same.
I certainly don't want to over-criticize Gaiman. I think he's a good writer. American Gods was incredible. There is just a sameness of plot structure that makes me feel like I know what is going to happen before it actually does. Most of the time, the details of the jouney are enough to make me want to trod the familiar plot path with Gaiman. Not this time, though. Anansi Boys is going out of the "to be read" stack and onto the shelf. Hopefully, I'll rediscover it in the future.
Posted by Nakia at April 19, 2006 09:40 AM