Neil Gaiman

So to begin with, Mr McGinnis said yes. He was, at the time, almost 90, and we were unable to believe our luck. We had talked about getting someone to work in the style of book covers of bygone days, but Bob McGinnis was there, and he had painted those covers. And he was – and is – still painting.

The brief from me was as simple as I could get it:

Mostly, for all except American Gods, which could be haunted spooky American landscape, I’d love people, and the feeling that we are looking at the kinds of book covers nobody does any longer. 

Mr Nancy in the foreground for Anansi Boys? - something that says Funny, Thorne Smith, slightly sexy, strange.

Stardust, a beautiful study of the Star ? Very fairy tale.

Neverwhere, very Adventures, and perhaps Richard and Door, or a scene or moment from the book?

Jennifer Brehl, my editor at William Morrow, came back with:

I think there should be figures/people on all four covers. Looking at McGinnis’s art (and the other covers you sent me) it seems that the characters are extremely important. I was also seeing TWO characters per cover. Rough images:

AMERICAN GODS: Shadow and Mr. Wednesday, standing in a rugged landscape beneath a lightning-streaked sky
ANANSI BOYS: Mr. Nancy in his yellow hat (didn’t he have a yellow hat, or am I misremembering?) holding mike singing to young woman
STARDUST: Tristran leaning over a sleeping (fallen) Yvaine (Star)
NEVERWHERE: Richard carrying/supporting a wounded Door through a door – leaving the World Above and stepping through to Below.

That seemed like enough to get going with.

We did American Gods first. Landscape and lightning, Shadow and Wednesday. We lifted the “Underground novel” blurb from a 60s paperback of Stranger in a Strange Land.

When we did Anansi Boys it followed the same pattern (although I knew what I wanted as a blurb):

Mr McGinnis sent in some cover sketches. He honed in on the opening scene, with Mr Nancy singing Karaoke to tourists in a Florida seaside bar. We had told him we wanted it to feel like it was a book cover from 60 years ago, and that all these covers would have slightly different sensibilities. We knew that he was the one painting the most memorable book covers in the 50s and 60s, so our brief was to paint what he would have done if he’d read the book back then.

He sent in 5 sketches and I picked a few of the ones I liked best and sent them to Todd, to start talking about visual book styles. (Here are a couple.)

Everyone’s favourite was the first.

Todd mentioned that it reminded him of this kind of style, and sent me book covers to show what he meant. He suggested that we have the title over on the left (like the ALL THE WAY cover here).

The finished cover painting came in…

and Todd did a few versions, always picking up the green from Mr Nancy’s hat and tie:

(There were lots more versions than these, but I’m limited to 10 images on Tumblr.) I suggested that we lost the Awards stuff, which made it feel cluttered. And I picked the typefaces and versions I liked best, which gave us:

The publisher wanted the #1 Bestseller information back…

I suggested that if we were going to do that we should add an adjective of some kind, like “rollicking” or “magical” just to make it less dry. So Todd did a few of those…

(We actually went with “Magical” on the finished book.) And we had a book cover.

One that felt way out of time, like it had been designed and painted 60 years ago.

The BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Anansi Boys has been available in the UK (on, for example, Audible or as a CD) and not in, say, the US, due to rights restrictions. BUT Radio 4 is rebroadcasting it this week. So wherever you are in the world, you can listen to Anansi Boys – the first five episodes go up this week at 11:30 in the evening UK time, and then episode 6 (which is twice as long) will go out on Saturday at 3 pm. You can listen to each episode once it’s broadcast. And after that, they’ll be up for 30 days each. You can use the dedicated page or the BBC Sounds App to listen.

It’s funny, moving, brilliantly acted and really very good. The link will take you to the BBC Radio 4 pages, which are filled with little treasures…

It stars Lenny Henry, Jacob Anderson, Sheila Atim, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Adjoa Andoh, Tanya Moodie, Julian Rhind-Tutt and lots of other wonderful people….

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09ghv0c

shersjar:

Having decided for myself that Anansi Boys might share the same pantheon as American Gods, since starting to read the novel I’d been looking for confirmation of Mr. Nancy’s description of his “good” but “stupid” son, whom Shadow reminded him of and whom Nancy “didn’t see as much as [he’d] like.” However, in my journey through the novel, instead of another “Shadow” I had anticipated to meet I found an endearing young man who’s as good natured as Shadow yet much more clueless and clumsy than Shadow had ever been, and who, much different from Shadow’s initially being a “man-shaped hole in the world,” was very self-conscious and embarrassed easily. And that’s so darn cute.

The novel was so charming, delightful, and funny – well, for most of it that didn’t include the murder of Maeve Livingstone – that I smiled, giggled, and laughed a lot while reading it (as well as feeling worried, shocked, and scared for some characters). I smiled whenever Fat Charlie subconsciously and continually put his foot in his mouth, especially around Rosie’s mother, and when Spider, the master imposter, swaggered around in Fat Charlie’s office and convinced everybody with his godly power that he’s his unfortunate brother; I giggled when Charlie’s bad luck reached the maximum and had his head banged on the overhead locker on his flight en route to Florida, and when he described himself as a “lunatic transatlantic pingpong ball;” I was shocked when Maeve had her head bashed in by the villain Grahame Coats, worried when Rosie and her mother were locked up by Coats in the meat locker that he’s got in his basement, (were they gonna be OK?) and relieved when Rosie decided that she’s not afraid and that she could save her mother and herself, etc. What a ride. The medium-length book was in fact a massive mixture of humor, horror, suspense, and myths, and I really enjoyed it. And my being enjoying the book so much was one of the reasons why I had been both excited and nervous about the radio adaptation at first: I was worried thinking what if the actors couldn’t fully deliver their characters, and what if the adaptation simply didn’t do its original any justice.

However, the adaptation proved that my worries were quite superfluous, for it didn’t disappoint. Not at all.

A) The first thing, in my humble opinion, that makes a podcast different from and more difficult to plot than a novel or a film/TV drama is that the story has to be conveyed thoroughly through the combination of voices and sound effects instead of images, or the image painted by words. Without a meticulous execution, the setting and the background of the story and the inner voice of the characters that can be fully depicted in a novel could be completely missing in the podcast, even if said podcast got a narrator. Because I had been concerned by the ability of the radio adaptation to fully convey the story before the broadcast took place, I was incredibly satisfied and happy with the result after I finally listened to it.

I think it’s remarkable that the adaptation achieved making everything happened in the story clearly comprehensible solely by sound effects and without the help of any lengthy narration: I like the portrayal of Spider’s extraordinary “makeover” of Charlie’s originally closet-sized spare room; I like the colorful scene where Charlie’s sent by the four elderly women (witches) to the Beginning of the World for the first time and visiting those animal Gods, each of whom had a very distinguishable voice, such as Elephant, Tiger, Monkey, and the Bird woman; I like the execution of the background music, the rhythm, and the sound effects in the shocking scene where Maeve was cold-bloodedly murdered by Coats. I “absatively” like that the adaptation effectively dissolved the narrative passages into conversations in order to make a clear point. The most representative example of which occurred in the passage where Charlie accidentally knocked on Coat’s door, talked to him on the speakerphone, and alerted him of Charlie’s presence in Saint Andrews. While the passage was written in the novel rather implicatively in order to create a suspenseful vibe, the podcast retold it in the form of a conversation mostly from Coats’ POV to ensure that the point of the passage was correctly delivered to the audience who’s only acquainted with the story by listening to it.

B) Another thing I like about the radio adaptation is how it played with the material it’s adapted from: I like that it was able to find a way to deconstruct the novel, and then re-arranged the ingredients advisably according to the time it’s given; I personally think it’s neat that the radio 4 successfully adapted the more-than-300-page novel into a mere 3-hour-long nice paced podcast. I like that the podcast began with Fat Charlie giving a heartfelt speech at a WRONG funeral and was called back by Mrs. Higgler; it’s such a tight, hilarious, dramatic start for the podcast, and shed an honest light on Charlie’s character from the very beginning. I also like that despite that the story had been shortened in order to fit in a 6-episode podcast some hilarious little details were made sure to be mentioned in passing, such as the penguin candles, the wax fruit incident, and the lime that did its best to help, which was not at all. (And the passage about the lime was adapted verbatim.)

C) Finally, I just want to say that I really enjoyed the performance of each and every actor involved in the podcast. Jacob Anderson’s Fat Charlie was exactly the same as I had imagined when I read the book, and he sounded even more authentic to the character when he added a nervous stutter; Nathan Stewart-Jarrett’s Spider WAS 100% Spider from the book, who’s charming, carefree, playful, and persuasive, and who spoke in American accent; with his lighthearted laughter, Lenny Henry officially made Anansi sound alive and extremely convincing; Tanya Moodie’s Mrs. Higgler sounded strict yet funny and was loyal to the description Gaiman wrote in the novel; Adjoa Andoh’s Bird woman made a great effort to imitate a bird that spoke perfect English in an intonation of “birdish" … Not to mention, Julian Rhind-Tutt’s Grahame Coats made the word “absatively,” which Gaiman creatively invented, sound perfectly nature it sounded almost like a real word. 

I also have got to mention here that it’s such a wonderful surprise hearing Gaiman’s cameo appearance in the podcast as the phone voice (in the 5th episode). It’s sorta like the time when Tayler Swift made a brief cameo in the film adaptation of the Giver as Rosemary, only with more lines and was much funnier and cheekier. I chuckled a lot listening to Gaiman’s demonstration of the phone voice. 

Overall, I just want to say that I enjoyed and liked the podcast very much, and one would definitely be disappointed if they were expecting to read some criticism in this review, because you won’t hear any critiques from me.

A big “Thank You" to everyone involved in the producing of the incredible radio adaptation of Anansi Boys: the adaptation made my winter break even more joyful and my New Year even happier.

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* Source of the pictures: all pictures I use in the review are from BBC: a) The title picture of the first episode; b) Gallery: Anansi Boys photos; c) BBC Radio 4 Tumblr Post ; d) Gallery: Cast photo

** If you haven’t listened to the podcast– you can still listen to it on BBC (6 episodes in total): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09ghv0c The podcast will be available for another 20 - 25 days (depending on the episode).

*** Also don’t miss out the phenomenal song of Fat Charlie’s life composed and sung by Jacob Anderson: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05qcprg

This made me smile.