Fat Charlie Nancy leads a small, careful life in London: a job he dislikes at the Grahame Coats Agency, a fiancée named Rosie, and a future mother-in-law who does not think much of him. Then he learns that his estranged father has died in Florida — and that Mr Nancy was Anansi, the trickster spider god of West African and Caribbean folktale. From an old family friend, Mrs Callyanne Higgler, Charlie also learns something he had never suspected: he has a brother.
Spider turns up on Charlie's doorstep carrying every scrap of magic and charm their father had and Charlie never got. He moves in, takes over Charlie's flat, his job and his engagement, and Charlie's ordinary life comes apart around him. Getting rid of a god's son means bargaining with older, hungrier powers than Spider — and the deal Charlie strikes sets Tiger and Bird Woman against both brothers. Meanwhile his employer, Grahame Coats, has been steadily emptying his clients' accounts, and is looking for somewhere convenient to leave the blame.
Neil Gaiman's 2005 novel is a comic fantasy about inheritance, humiliation, and the stories a family tells about itself, moving between London, Florida and a Caribbean island called Saint Andrews. It shares the god Mr Nancy with American Gods but reads entirely on its own, and it won the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award and the British Fantasy Award in 2006.
