ISU: Anansi boys Continued (Chapter 5 to 7)

Recap from my last blog: Charlie finds out he has a brother, who is an Anansi God like his father. He tells a spider he needs his brother and Spider, the name of his brother, comes to Charlie. They drink and have a wonderful time. Charlie wakes up next to Daisy, a girl he met the night before, and is confronted by his future mother-in-law. When he is asked about Daisy, he lies that she is his cousin.

My thoughts so far: Before Daisy leaves Charlie's house, she kisses him on the lips. Charlie feels it was passionate and meaningful. He has never experienced that feeling before even with Rosie. So now I am thinking, if Rosie is distracted with Spider...maybe Charlie will fall in love with Daisy.

Because Charlie had a dreadful hangover from the night before, Spider took his place at work. One positive Spider does is earn Charlie a two thousand check and 2 weeks off of work with pay. They don't look alike at all, but because Spider is a God, he can make any human believe he is someone else. This leads to Rosie, Charlies fiancee, believing that Spider is Charlie. She describes how she falls in love with him all over again. She never noticed how beautiful his smile was and how good she felt around Charlie when in reality, its not Charlie. I founds this to be the humourous part of the story. Spider shows Rosie a wonderful time and asks her out again. When I first read this, I thought "How could Spider do such a thing to Charlie!!!! He is making Rosie cheat on Charlie. What an awful brother Charlie has. Spider has no sense of self or respect in my opinion".

To make the situation even worse, Spider won't leave! Instead he makes a room for himself with a waterfall outside his window and a hot tub built in. I have added ignorant to Spider's list of personal traits. The worst thing Spider does is he takes Rosie home and has sexual encounters with her. Charlie unforuntatly sees this act and goes hysteric. All he can think to do is walk off his anger and confusion. Meanwhile, Grahame Coats, Charlie's boss, is planning on hiring a dectective to find out if Charlie has been stealing money from the company. It is a coincidence that the detective is Daisy. Dum dum dum.

A mystery is starting to show who everyone really is and what their role is in the story. I am at a cliff-hanger right now in the story and am excited to see how this story unfolds.

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Fat Charlie was a lonely child who's mother, left at a young age and was mentally abused by his father. For instance, his father told him that there was a law stating on "Presidents' Day", you dressed up as your favorite president. As gullable as Charlie was, he went to school dressed as a president and was bullied by the other kids. Of course when he got home, his father laughed because there was no such thing as "Presidents' Day". I thought this to be a very cruel trick and created a living hell for Charlie in his childhood. Charlie resented his father for all his mean tricks and grew away from him. Only did Fat Charlie have to see his father again when his fiancee, Rosie, makes Charlie invite his dad to the wedding. When he phoned up an old neighbor, Mrs. Higgler to invite her and get his dads number, he discovered his father has just passed.

Charlie flew to Florida and attended his funeral, meaning burying his dad, literaly. Mrs. Higgler met Charlie at the funeral and later announced Charlie's father was an Anansi God and the brother he never knew about. "Anansi was said to be a spider. He used to get himself into trouble and he used to get himself out of trouble."(Gaiman, Neil,pg 42). She said that if Charlie ever needed his brother, all he had to do was tell a spider. I thought it sounded like a crazy idea, talking to a spider to send a message, but sure enough, Spider, his brother, shows up on his door step. The day after they met, Spider took Charlie out drinking and singing in memory of their father. The next morning, Charlie woke up to another girl, Daisy, and had a painful hangover. Lucky for Charlie, they never slept together. But Rosies mother came later, when Daisy was still there, to talk to Charlie about wedding invitations. Charlie lied that Daisy was his cousin and would be invited to the wedding. What a close call!

So far the book has caught my attention and is keeping it well. There are alot of different scenes of Charlie's life in this book, and plenty of details to remember. It is a little confusing to remember everything that has happened so far and to piece it together but I tried to keep it short and simple.

The Blue Helmet

Over the last week, I completed reading "The Blue Helmet". The author,William Bell, lives in Orillia, Ontario and has received several awards for the books he has written over the years. I really enjoyed this book because you can see the changes in Lee when he meets new people and how it makes him a better person. I found the stories from the journal give you a clear image of the disgusting and appalling places he saw, with burned houses and people. The character of Cutter is my favorite because even though he has unusual theories and thoughts about people and life, he is always right. Lee realizes from Cutter that no one is really normal. This realization could be a factor of Lee's acceptance of himself. I think alot of people could relate themselves to this book. But my absolute favorite part of this book is the last sentence when the theme is explained.

The main character, Lee, is a troubled kid who loses his mother at a young age and his father works two jobs to pay the bills. He gets caught trying to break and enter into an auto shop while doing initiation for the Tarantulas, a local gang in Hamilton, Ontario. The Tarantulas set him up and now he is under arrest. He is sent to live and work in his Aunt Reena's cafe in Toronto. There, he sets up a currier business and meets a strange but intelligent man named Bruce Cutter. Weeks after meeting each other, and becoming close friends, Cutter commits suicide. Lee is devastated and shocked when he finds out Cutter has left his whole estate to him. Lee knows there is a reason Cutter left everything to him and he is determined to find out. After hours of searching, he finds a journal, a blue helmet and bloody child's shoe. The journal contains stories of Cutter's war adventures as a peacekeeper between Serbians and Croatians. All the death and horrific sites sent Cutter into a state of anxiety which he could never recover from. Finally, Lee realizes the message Cutter was trying to tell him, you have to face the war inside yourself before you can find peace.