5 Reviews=Anger - Christopher Moore - Lamb, The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
At Christmas, I was given this book to read and decided to include it as one of my novels for the Critical Monkey Challenge as this is not my usual "cup of tea".
Nonetheless, having been kicked out of a church and as a lover of Monty Python's "Life of Brian", I had high hopes that this might just tickle my funny bone and compensate for all those hours spent sitting on hard pews during my childhood.
I know, there are people out there who think that this novel is absolutely hysterical...and while parts of it were pretty funny, I really don't think that it qualifies as "hysterical". Quite frankly, I much preferred, Corey Redekop's "Shelf Monkey" (which uses a much more original premise -- no, he is not paying me to say that, nor am I finagling to get another free book) and Jessica Grant's "Come, Thou Tortoise" (which contains some genuinely funny Newfie humour).
WHAT I LIKED:
Here is one of the passages from "Lamb" that appealed to my cynical nature. Joshua asks about being a stone cutter.
"'Alphaeus,' Joshua called, 'does the work get easier once you know what you are doing?'
'Your lungs grow thick with stone dust and your eyes bleary from the sun and fragments thrown up by the chisel. You pour your lifeblood out into works of stone for Romans who will take your money in taxes to feed soldiers who will nail your people to crosses for wanting to be free. Your back breaks, your bones creak, your wife screeches at you, and your children torment you with open, begging mouths, like greedy baby birds in the nest. You go to bed every night so tired and beaten that you pray to the Lord to send the angel of death to take you in your sleep so you don't have to face another morning. It also has its downside.'
'Thanks,' Joshua said. He looked at me, one eyebrow raised.
'I for one, am excited,' I said. 'I am ready to cut some stone. Stand back, Josh, my chisel is on fire. Life is stretched out before us like a great bazaar, and I can't wait to taste the sweets to be found there.' ...
'Biff, are you sure you weren't sent here by the Devil to vex me?'" p. 50-51
Moore also knows how to take our shared experiences and put them into another context. On p. 185, a monster who is chasing Biff remarks, "'It's been a long time since I've eaten a Jew. A good Jew sticks to your ribs. That's the problem with Chinese, you eat six or seven of them and in a half hour you're hungry again. No offense, miss.'"
Another aspect of Moore's writing that I enjoyed was the seamless inclusion of his research. For example, he refers to "'The three jewels of Tao: compassion, moderation, and humility. Balthasar said compassion leads to courage, moderation leads to generosity, and humility leads to leadership.'" p. 195 Also funny was a comment concerning reincarnation from a Buddhist monk to Biff: "'You'll be working off your karma for a thousand years as a dung beetle just to evolve to the point of being dense." p. 244
Further, Moore really seems to know his Scripture and creates a fictional childhood and youth for the Messiah during which he develops skills (such as raising creatures from the dead and the multiplication of limited food) which later become useful in the performance of miracles; and during which he learns Truths (such as the need to 'Turn the other cheek.') which later appear in a modified form in his messages to the masses.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
I found that Biff's (and other's) unending sexual experiences (some of which were quite unsavoury) and the foul language used by many of the characters interfered with the illusion of being in the first century. Perhaps that was deliberate but I personally found it detracted from the "fun". "'You owe me, you ungrateful fucks!'" p. 272
I also didn't like the sojourn into India. Don't get me wrong, I love the ridiculous and I adore serious silly but I found that the description of the sacrifices made to Kali were simply not funny but gratuitously shocking. "It was still hours from the height of the ceremony at midnight, when the children would be hacked to death, but we wanted to be there in time to stop the revelers from cutting off the children's fingers if we could. Now, the wooden elephants were empty on their turntables, but the altar of Kali was already filling with gruesome tribute. The heads of a thousand goats had been laid on the altar before the goddess, and the blood ran slick over the stones and in the grooves that channeled it into large brass pots at the corner of the altar...worshippers danced in the sticky shower as the blood flowed down upon them...'They're not the heads of the children?' 'No, I think those are the heads of strangers who happened down the road we were on before Rumi came along to pull us into the grass'...After the severed heads were dispersed across the altar, the female acolytes came out of the crowd dragging the headless corpse of a man which they laid on the steps leading to the altar. Each one mimed having intercourse with the corpse, then rubbed their genitalia against the bloody stump of its neck before dancing away, blood and ochre dripping down the insides of their thighs." p. 275, 276. Pretty disgusting....
Finally, I found that the retelling of the story of the life of the Messiah (contained in the Bible's gospels) was neither necessary, nor innovative but actually pretty boring. Maybe there is such a thing as "too much of a good thing".
OK the Day of Judgement dawns -- How many Critical Monkeys does Scrat allocate to Christopher Moore's "Lamb"?
I was going to say FOUR but given his descriptions of the Kali rituals in India, I think THREE CRITICAL MONKEYS as well as a GRUESOME, BLOODY, DRIPPING BODY PART or TWO placed on some altar somewhere might be more appropriate.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
GUILT!
4 Reviews=Guilt -- J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts) - Strangers in Death
??? Here is a question for my fellow Critical Monkeys: As a girl, many years ago, (and here comes the embarrassing part), I read Harlequin Romances. I think Nora Roberts wrote for Harlequin but I am not sure if I have ever actually read her work. I leave it to my fellow monkeys and the big alpha Critical Monkey (Corey Redecop) to decide whether or not this should be disqualified???
Here is my review.
Strangers in Death is one of a series of novels by Nora Roberts writing as J.D. Robb. The protagonist is Lieutenant Eve Dallas, her partner, Detective Delia Peabody. The story opens with a graphic description of a horrible homicide scene involving a very rich philanthropist, Thomas Aurelius Anders. The crime occurred in his bedroom and the victim has been discovered trussed with black velvet cords to the four corners of his bed, naked but covered with blanket, penis in a drug-induced permanent erection and surrounded by sex toys. So begins what I am thinking will be a very disgusting read...so not my kind of novel!! What was I thinking? What WAS I thinking????
Actually, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Definitely better than the Jameses (Patterson and Frey).
What I liked about this novel is that there was a significant amount of it dedicated to the protagonist and her life with her husband, Roarke. The character is introspective and critical of herself. She questions her decisions and her tactics. She bends the rules occasionally in her pursuit of justice. I also liked the fact that the protagonist was a female detective who was successful and independent. Unfortunately, I found that the other characters were not as well developed, although Roarke was somewhat more realistic than the others.
(Spoiler Warning: Not that I really expect any of you to want to read this book.)
In terms of the plot, it borrows the idea of strangers killing the other's unwanted spouse and is somewhat stereotypical in that the wife is a money-hungry dilettante with nothing better to do than spend her self-made rich husband's hard-earned money. Nonetheless, the plot was intricately woven and Lieutenant Dallas' dogged determination and belief in her investigative skills were entertaining as the mystery was solved and the wicked carried off to jail.
Although it is set in 2060, very little has changed in society -- people are still killing one another. Unfortunately, Roberts fails to take advantage of this futuristic setting by inventing new technology which would help her protagonist solve her problem more quickly and perhaps intrigue the reader. The realism wanes in this regard.
In terms of Robert's writing, it is very simplistic...limited vocabulary, banal sentence structure, no memorable metaphors, similes or any other literary device. In fact, the only memorable part of the writing involves the sex scenes which I found detracted from the novel and made me feel voyeuristic -- I guess I am a prude!
Critical Monkeys for this book: Two and a half out of Five. Will I read another? Very unlikely!!
??? Here is a question for my fellow Critical Monkeys: As a girl, many years ago, (and here comes the embarrassing part), I read Harlequin Romances. I think Nora Roberts wrote for Harlequin but I am not sure if I have ever actually read her work. I leave it to my fellow monkeys and the big alpha Critical Monkey (Corey Redecop) to decide whether or not this should be disqualified???
Here is my review.
Strangers in Death is one of a series of novels by Nora Roberts writing as J.D. Robb. The protagonist is Lieutenant Eve Dallas, her partner, Detective Delia Peabody. The story opens with a graphic description of a horrible homicide scene involving a very rich philanthropist, Thomas Aurelius Anders. The crime occurred in his bedroom and the victim has been discovered trussed with black velvet cords to the four corners of his bed, naked but covered with blanket, penis in a drug-induced permanent erection and surrounded by sex toys. So begins what I am thinking will be a very disgusting read...so not my kind of novel!! What was I thinking? What WAS I thinking????
Actually, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Definitely better than the Jameses (Patterson and Frey).
What I liked about this novel is that there was a significant amount of it dedicated to the protagonist and her life with her husband, Roarke. The character is introspective and critical of herself. She questions her decisions and her tactics. She bends the rules occasionally in her pursuit of justice. I also liked the fact that the protagonist was a female detective who was successful and independent. Unfortunately, I found that the other characters were not as well developed, although Roarke was somewhat more realistic than the others.
(Spoiler Warning: Not that I really expect any of you to want to read this book.)
In terms of the plot, it borrows the idea of strangers killing the other's unwanted spouse and is somewhat stereotypical in that the wife is a money-hungry dilettante with nothing better to do than spend her self-made rich husband's hard-earned money. Nonetheless, the plot was intricately woven and Lieutenant Dallas' dogged determination and belief in her investigative skills were entertaining as the mystery was solved and the wicked carried off to jail.
Although it is set in 2060, very little has changed in society -- people are still killing one another. Unfortunately, Roberts fails to take advantage of this futuristic setting by inventing new technology which would help her protagonist solve her problem more quickly and perhaps intrigue the reader. The realism wanes in this regard.
In terms of Robert's writing, it is very simplistic...limited vocabulary, banal sentence structure, no memorable metaphors, similes or any other literary device. In fact, the only memorable part of the writing involves the sex scenes which I found detracted from the novel and made me feel voyeuristic -- I guess I am a prude!
Critical Monkeys for this book: Two and a half out of Five. Will I read another? Very unlikely!!
Monday, February 1, 2010
BARGAINING!
3 Reviews=Bargaining -- Bright Shiny Morning - James Frey
I know, I know -- this is the author who pulled a scam on Oprah! Oh well, people blunder sometimes -- I thought I would give him a chance. (Frey, I figured, must be capable of writing if he caught Oprah's attention -- after all she did like Anne Marie MacDonald.)
In this novel -- and he does call it a novel and not an autobiography, he writes about Los Angeles and a few recurring characters.
I say that he writes about Los Angeles because I get the feeling that he did considerable research and felt the need to include ALL that information in this so-called novel. It begins innocuously enough. Between chapters, he has a brief non-fiction paragraphs set apart on an individual page. At first, I thought these paragraphs were relevant and read them attentively. Then, I realized that although they were semi-interesting, they were ultimately unimportant as far as the story was concerned.
Unfortunately, Frey did not confine his need to incorporate his research into his novel with these "between chapter factoid pages" and instead began incorporating longer interruptions into the narrative. One of first significant interruptions occurs during the story of Larry and his love of guns. This interruption is a list (in this case, a fictitious list): "A sampling of customers at Larry's firearms on an average day", which while I was reading I did not find too intrusive.
Nonetheless, Frey really started to tick me off when on p. 135 he began rambling on and on and on about "Freeways! Highways! EXPRESSWAYS!! AN EIGHTEEN-RAMP INTERSTATE EXCHANGE!!!" This "interruption" as I like to call them lasted for -- wait for it -- ELEVEN pages!! Unbelieveable, but true. Relevance to the story -- NONE!
Another "interruption" which drew my attention -- if not my frustration -- occurred when he starts going on about gangs -- for a total of TWELVE pages! Immediately followed by another TWELVE pages about people who went to Los Angeles to make it big -- and who were totally, once again, irrelevant to the plot. A few pages later, he turns his research into "Fun Facts Los Angeles, Volume 1" which lasts THREE pages, followed a bit later by Volumes 2 which lasts TWO pages. Then, back to people arriving in LA, this time immigrants from all over the world, and others who arrive to live and study, lasting for THIRTEEN pages. Further on, there are SIX pages listing the natural disasters which have pounded LA and incurred considerable cost as a consequence. Stories of artists -- another TWELVE page "interruption" followed by SEVEN pages about War Vets who have been involved in the 20th and 21st century wars, and then FIFTEEN pages about another couple of kids who went to LA to make their dreams come true. As I said, PAGE AFTER PAGE of irrelevant information repeatedly INTERRUPTING the story. I guess, some people might like this kind of thing, but I found it pretty disjointed and just plain irritating.
The novel's "plot" is actually made up of several individual stories which again, are not related to each other except by their common setting. The plots could have been interesting but I found them hard to follow because they were interwoven and also there were so many "interruptions" that I would forget what had happened in the previous section. I think that these should have been written as short stories and compiled in an anthology rather than trying to make a book. Of course, I suspect that it would not have sold as well, as short story anthologies are purchased less often than novels.
So what do I think about this book. Well, it will be the last James Frey I read -- unless, for some reason, I join a reading challenge specifically targeting bad writing and self-inflicted pain and suffering.
Like James Patterson's Double Cross -- this gets a ZERO CRITICAL MONKEY RATING!
I know, I know -- this is the author who pulled a scam on Oprah! Oh well, people blunder sometimes -- I thought I would give him a chance. (Frey, I figured, must be capable of writing if he caught Oprah's attention -- after all she did like Anne Marie MacDonald.)
In this novel -- and he does call it a novel and not an autobiography, he writes about Los Angeles and a few recurring characters.
I say that he writes about Los Angeles because I get the feeling that he did considerable research and felt the need to include ALL that information in this so-called novel. It begins innocuously enough. Between chapters, he has a brief non-fiction paragraphs set apart on an individual page. At first, I thought these paragraphs were relevant and read them attentively. Then, I realized that although they were semi-interesting, they were ultimately unimportant as far as the story was concerned.
Unfortunately, Frey did not confine his need to incorporate his research into his novel with these "between chapter factoid pages" and instead began incorporating longer interruptions into the narrative. One of first significant interruptions occurs during the story of Larry and his love of guns. This interruption is a list (in this case, a fictitious list): "A sampling of customers at Larry's firearms on an average day", which while I was reading I did not find too intrusive.
Nonetheless, Frey really started to tick me off when on p. 135 he began rambling on and on and on about "Freeways! Highways! EXPRESSWAYS!! AN EIGHTEEN-RAMP INTERSTATE EXCHANGE!!!" This "interruption" as I like to call them lasted for -- wait for it -- ELEVEN pages!! Unbelieveable, but true. Relevance to the story -- NONE!
Another "interruption" which drew my attention -- if not my frustration -- occurred when he starts going on about gangs -- for a total of TWELVE pages! Immediately followed by another TWELVE pages about people who went to Los Angeles to make it big -- and who were totally, once again, irrelevant to the plot. A few pages later, he turns his research into "Fun Facts Los Angeles, Volume 1" which lasts THREE pages, followed a bit later by Volumes 2 which lasts TWO pages. Then, back to people arriving in LA, this time immigrants from all over the world, and others who arrive to live and study, lasting for THIRTEEN pages. Further on, there are SIX pages listing the natural disasters which have pounded LA and incurred considerable cost as a consequence. Stories of artists -- another TWELVE page "interruption" followed by SEVEN pages about War Vets who have been involved in the 20th and 21st century wars, and then FIFTEEN pages about another couple of kids who went to LA to make their dreams come true. As I said, PAGE AFTER PAGE of irrelevant information repeatedly INTERRUPTING the story. I guess, some people might like this kind of thing, but I found it pretty disjointed and just plain irritating.
The novel's "plot" is actually made up of several individual stories which again, are not related to each other except by their common setting. The plots could have been interesting but I found them hard to follow because they were interwoven and also there were so many "interruptions" that I would forget what had happened in the previous section. I think that these should have been written as short stories and compiled in an anthology rather than trying to make a book. Of course, I suspect that it would not have sold as well, as short story anthologies are purchased less often than novels.
So what do I think about this book. Well, it will be the last James Frey I read -- unless, for some reason, I join a reading challenge specifically targeting bad writing and self-inflicted pain and suffering.
Like James Patterson's Double Cross -- this gets a ZERO CRITICAL MONKEY RATING!
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