Review: Anansi Boys
Aug. 27th, 2009 07:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
4thofelevenI have to say, I was pretty disappointed with this book. I haven’t read much Gaiman, but there’s a fair amount of overlap between fans of his work and fans of things I’m into, and Anansi Boys has gotten pretty much universally good reviews, so I was rather looking forward to it when I saw it on the assigned reading list this semester.
Here’s the problems I had. One, race. A lot of reviews make a big deal out of how the book handles race, and to be fair, it is nice to see a fantasy narrative where the protagonist is a black man of Caribbean ancestry. It’s also kind of clever that Gaiman doesn’t mention character’s race unless they’re white. On the other hand, I’m not sure if it’s necessarily praiseworthy to have written a book with an almost entirely black cast in which it seems most readers completely missed that aspect on their first reading. The book seems to almost go out of its way to avoid racial issues – a particularly bizarre example is the British police officer of Ethiopian and Korean ancestry who feels there’s a distance between her and the other officers she works with… because she focuses mainly on computer crimes.
I also found it a little dubious that the scenes in Britain were all in a fairly realistic London, while the scenes in the Caribbean are set on a fictitious island, the people of which are played mainly for laughs.
Two, storytelling. I felt the narrative rather wasted its concepts. Early on, it raises the idea of storytelling and who controls stories through the myth of Anansi stealing control of stories and by doing so turning stories of brute strength into stories of tricksters. Except this isn’t really a trickster story, rather it’s the story of the ordinary man who discovers he’s a prince and through overcoming adversity grows into his power – which is, if anything, the complete opposite of trickster stories which are about the proud trickster acquiring things or power that he has no innate right to, and often ending up humbled as much as his enemies in the process. Anansi himself ends up almost a footnote in the story, and really, the story wouldn’t have changed much if the protagonist had instead found out his father was really a Jedi Knight.
Three, and most importantly, the issues I had with the role of women in the story. This is pretty much the main reason I ended the book with a negative impression. The other two issues aren’t really problems so much as missed potential and the book is well written and generally entertaining. But there’s one bit that I felt was so badly handled that it completely threw off my enjoyment of the rest of the book. See, the main character, Charlie, has a brother Spider. Spider’s much more in tune with his semi-divine nature, to the point that people believe things he says just because he said them. So, at one point, Charlie’s too hung-over to go to work, and Spider decided to impersonate him for the day so he doesn’t get in trouble – said impersonation consisting entirely of walking up to people and saying confidently “I’m Charlie.” Now, Charlie has a fiancé, Rosie. You see where this is going, right?
So, yeah, Rosie sleeps with Spider thinking he’s Charlie. Just in case this wasn’t dubious enough, it’s already been established that Rosie and Charlie aren’t sleeping together; she’s intending to save it for when they’re married. So just in case it wasn’t bad enough that she wouldn’t have consented to sleep with Spider if she’d known who he was, she apparently wouldn’t have normally consented to sleep with him even if he was who he claimed to be!
Not only does the narrative not seem to realise this is a rape scenario, it doesn’t seem to recognise that there’s anything dubious about the situation at all – or when it does, the main focus is on how humiliated Charlie feels. And then, just in case the whole scenario wasn’t leaving a bad enough taste in my mouth as it was, it then goes on to have Rosie come to the realisation she never really loved Charlie in the first place, and then gets together with Spider, with an epilogue detailing that they’re happily married.
Throw in the fact that this otherwise light-hearted, vaguely Douglas Adams-esque novel also features bizarrely mood-breaking scenes where a woman is murdered or where two female characters are locked in a meat locker for at least a day by the murderer while he decides how best to dispose of the bodies… throw in that the only goddess in the story is the main villain, yet is still characterised as primarily a scavenger, a subordinate to a male figure who has power in his own right, and, well, like I said, the whole thing left a very bad taste in my mouth.
Anyone else read the book and felt the same? I was a little surprised not to be able to find a single review or discussion that mentioned these issues even in passing.
Here’s the problems I had. One, race. A lot of reviews make a big deal out of how the book handles race, and to be fair, it is nice to see a fantasy narrative where the protagonist is a black man of Caribbean ancestry. It’s also kind of clever that Gaiman doesn’t mention character’s race unless they’re white. On the other hand, I’m not sure if it’s necessarily praiseworthy to have written a book with an almost entirely black cast in which it seems most readers completely missed that aspect on their first reading. The book seems to almost go out of its way to avoid racial issues – a particularly bizarre example is the British police officer of Ethiopian and Korean ancestry who feels there’s a distance between her and the other officers she works with… because she focuses mainly on computer crimes.
I also found it a little dubious that the scenes in Britain were all in a fairly realistic London, while the scenes in the Caribbean are set on a fictitious island, the people of which are played mainly for laughs.
Two, storytelling. I felt the narrative rather wasted its concepts. Early on, it raises the idea of storytelling and who controls stories through the myth of Anansi stealing control of stories and by doing so turning stories of brute strength into stories of tricksters. Except this isn’t really a trickster story, rather it’s the story of the ordinary man who discovers he’s a prince and through overcoming adversity grows into his power – which is, if anything, the complete opposite of trickster stories which are about the proud trickster acquiring things or power that he has no innate right to, and often ending up humbled as much as his enemies in the process. Anansi himself ends up almost a footnote in the story, and really, the story wouldn’t have changed much if the protagonist had instead found out his father was really a Jedi Knight.
Three, and most importantly, the issues I had with the role of women in the story. This is pretty much the main reason I ended the book with a negative impression. The other two issues aren’t really problems so much as missed potential and the book is well written and generally entertaining. But there’s one bit that I felt was so badly handled that it completely threw off my enjoyment of the rest of the book. See, the main character, Charlie, has a brother Spider. Spider’s much more in tune with his semi-divine nature, to the point that people believe things he says just because he said them. So, at one point, Charlie’s too hung-over to go to work, and Spider decided to impersonate him for the day so he doesn’t get in trouble – said impersonation consisting entirely of walking up to people and saying confidently “I’m Charlie.” Now, Charlie has a fiancé, Rosie. You see where this is going, right?
So, yeah, Rosie sleeps with Spider thinking he’s Charlie. Just in case this wasn’t dubious enough, it’s already been established that Rosie and Charlie aren’t sleeping together; she’s intending to save it for when they’re married. So just in case it wasn’t bad enough that she wouldn’t have consented to sleep with Spider if she’d known who he was, she apparently wouldn’t have normally consented to sleep with him even if he was who he claimed to be!
Not only does the narrative not seem to realise this is a rape scenario, it doesn’t seem to recognise that there’s anything dubious about the situation at all – or when it does, the main focus is on how humiliated Charlie feels. And then, just in case the whole scenario wasn’t leaving a bad enough taste in my mouth as it was, it then goes on to have Rosie come to the realisation she never really loved Charlie in the first place, and then gets together with Spider, with an epilogue detailing that they’re happily married.
Throw in the fact that this otherwise light-hearted, vaguely Douglas Adams-esque novel also features bizarrely mood-breaking scenes where a woman is murdered or where two female characters are locked in a meat locker for at least a day by the murderer while he decides how best to dispose of the bodies… throw in that the only goddess in the story is the main villain, yet is still characterised as primarily a scavenger, a subordinate to a male figure who has power in his own right, and, well, like I said, the whole thing left a very bad taste in my mouth.
Anyone else read the book and felt the same? I was a little surprised not to be able to find a single review or discussion that mentioned these issues even in passing.
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no subject
on 2009-08-27 12:18 pm (UTC)To be honest, I've never really understood why Gaiman is placed on such a pedestal -- he seems like a nice guy, and his work is generally entertaining, but I'm almost always left feeling dissatisfied. And vaguely bothered by implications in some cases.
Edit: because I shouldn't attempt HTML when tired.
no subject
on 2009-08-28 10:26 am (UTC)