I am a huge fan of Christopher Moore. I have pre-ordered his last three books, just so I could have them in my hot little hands the day before their announced release. So you can imagine my joy when Fool showed up in my mailbox 3 weeks ago. I usually read his books quickly, gleefully.
I’m still reading Fool.:(:o
Man, this thing is ponderous. It’s his re-telling of King Lear through the eyes of the court jester. Now, normally I don’t have a problem with that. I loved Wicked, Mirror, Mirror and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Gregory Maguire’s retelling of the Wizard of Oz, Snow White and Cinderella. Hell, Lamb is pretty much Moore’s retelling of the New Testament, and I loved that. Maybe it’s the faux-Shakespearean writing, although I have no trouble following the dialog. I’ve never read King Lear, but I have enough knowledge of it through cultural osmosis that I get what he’s satirizing. I do object to the aggressive salaciousness of it. There is a cornucopia of bodily fluids lovingly described on just about every third page, and that gets pretty wearisome. That’s what made me uncomfortable about Tom Robbins. Now I’m not a delicate blossom, swooning and calling for my salts because that nasty book gave me the vapors. I just find a lot of the imagery pretty gross and, frankly, a little lazy. I feel like Moore kinda coasted through this book, and didn’t feel like coming up with anything new and completely his for his next project.
Oh, I’ll finish it, but mostly out of a sense of duty. Maybe there’s a big boffo ending that will surprise me and reward me for swimming through all the goo in the first 3/4 of the book. I hope so. But for now, this book gets a big “meh” from the singular household.