It’s hard not to wonder sometimes about the topics Christopher Moore chooses for his humour books. The last one I read was, after all, about Christ’s childhood, and this one… well. This one is about, in various ways, a cargo cult in Micronesia, a heavenly game of poker, genital mutilation, cannibalism, organ harvesting, promiscuity, the impact of large civilizations on smaller ones, a rather toothless parody of Mary Kay cosmetics, and of course, a talking fruit bat. With a list like that, where to begin? (Also, I’ve got to say pretty much every cover was much cooler than the North American paperback edition pictured.) Let’s start by saying it wasn’t as funny as the other book. Which is not to say that it wasn’t funny at all, but there were very few laugh-out-loud moments in the book, and I cringed a little when the protagonist’s back-story turned out to be an elaborate but way, way too obvious Hamlet parody. I also cringed more than a little at the many and sundry ways in which his genitals were abused.
There’s a fine line a writer has to walk, especially now, and especially in humour, when dealing with indigenous peoples. One can’t be disrespectful, but that the same time broad generalizations can be funny, and Christopher Moore has said on more than one occasion that he’s just trying to be a popular author, not a literary one, which means selling books and sometimes making the dick and fart jokes to keep his publisher happy. But! With that in mind, I never once felt that he wasn’t taking his fictional Shark People seriously. I mean, obviously he was playing them for laughs, but not in a disrespectful way. They were intelligent folk, just different.
In any event, the book was entertaining, if not up to Lamb‘s standard, and the formula for a one or two day read is there; it’s funny enough in the beginning to get you hooked, and then it gets dangerous and exciting just when you think it’s time to put it down. Maybe grab this one at the library instead of the bookstore. We need to encourage another Lamb. Also, there needed to be more scenes with the talking bat.
Next: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.
