This hilarious book was my introduction to the world of Christopher Moore.
His books are the only ones that will have me laughing out loud. He will do the same to you, too.
So read this fantastic book alone ... unless you like being stared at.
This vampire comedy is light, funny, and not at all hackneyed.
Between scenes of laid back workers bowling frozen turkeys on the graveyard shift in a supermarket, or snapping turtles loose in a loft and gnawing on designer shoes, this novel has comic charm to spare.
But it also packs an appealingly downbeat message about the consumer culture:
Becoming a vampire has given the twentysomething heroine "a crampless case of rattlesnake PMS"--
a grumpy mood in which she realizes that she can dress to the nines as a "Donner Party Barbie" ...
and still end up disillusioned and unhappy, just another slacker doing her own laundry and watching sucky TV 'til the sun rises.
Christopher Moore delivers fast-paced supernatual hijinks, with a peppering of pinpoint jabs at the inanity of modern urban living.
The dialog must be among the wittiest of any American author today.
It's one thing to chuckle over a funny quote; a real treat to laugh anew when deadpan rejoinders add a whole new twist to the humor.
Add a host of imaginative complications, and the reader had better hang on for this wild jaunt. Like Moore's other novels (Lamb and the sequels to this booK, You Suck & Bite Me, introducing Abby Normal) the satire is decidedly upbeat.
A fast summary of this horror, farce and fantasy mix:
Attacked on her way home from work in San Francisco's financial district, sexy redhead Jody wakes up under a dumpster
and gradually realizes that she has been transformed into a vampire.
Needing a safe place to hide from daylight and her attacker as she masters her new powers, she turns to Tommy, a 19-year-old aspiring writer from Indiana whom she's just met.
Becoming lovers, the two get an apartment together where Tommy avidly studies the mysteries of both vampires and women.
But Jody's vampire mentor, Elijah Ben Sapir, who's leaving blood-drained bodies all over the city, has it in for Tommy, as do the cops ...
who suspect the young man of the killings.
With the aid of both the rebellious young misfits he works with and an eccentric homeless man, the self-proclaimed Emperor of San Francisco,
Tommy aims to vanquish Elijah Ben Sapir in order to save his beloved and himself.
Moore manages to let the redemptive qualities of his characters sneak through all the farcical shenanigans.
As a result, you'll cheer for the night-shift kids as they stumble all over themselves (and a few bodies) to find true happiness.
A book easily finished before sunrise ... with tears in your eyes ... not from weariness but from the sustained laughter.
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Here's Christopher Moore talking about the latest in his BLOODSUCKING trilogy, BITE ME :
Sounds like something I would read. Excellent review.
ReplyDeleteHugs and chocolate!
Humor can be a good thing, laughing at the funny things usually means we have a quirky sense of the real.
ReplyDeleteI've not read Moore, I'd probably enjoy it. San Francisco is my third fave city, after Paris and Vancouver. San Fran is much like Vancouver and I felt totally at home there.
Nice review, hope you're feeling better.
Shelly:
ReplyDeleteMoore makes me laugh -- which I need right now. :-)
D.G.:
Laughing to keep the madness at bay, right? I still hurt. Moving pulls at the wound and the stitches. But you have to move. :-) Snowball might try to bury me in his kitter litter!