Neil Gaiman, Ananzi Boys

The protagonist of this book, who is called “Fat Charlie”, lives a happy and satisfied life( he is actually not fat). He owns things that an ordinary person desires for. He has a perfect lover, and he doesn’t need to worry about family conflict, because he lives in London far away from his family. But life will not be so good all the time. Charlie has to go back to his hometown in Florida to the funeral of his father. Later, he gets to know a lot of unknown things of father which his brother doesn’t think he knows. However, his life starts to crumble when he calls for his brother by chance. He is incapable to get rid of trouble that continue happens to his life.

One unique point of this novel is, the lead protagonist, Fat Charlie, is such an ordinary, common, or even can be called useless, compared to other characters. For example, I felt sympathetic of his life and situation when the story just started. However, as I continued to read, the feeling that I wanted to strangle him became stronger and stronger. It is unbelievable that there can be such a person who is without a single redeeming feature in the world. I even doubt that how can he grow up and live until now. But this is what makes this book so different from others. The lead character is not a perfect man, but a real person who has a lot of backwards.