More, More Moore

My collection (minus one… Fluke is on loan to my folks)

I am a huge fan of the author Christopher Moore. I have bought and read literally, every book he has written. It all started about seven years ago, when a friend gave me a copy of Lamb for my birthday. Lamb is a wonderfully blasphemous account of the early years of Jesus Christ as told by his childhood friend, Biff. Incredibly well researched, and told with great humour, Lamb quickly became my favourite book that year. Since then I have re-read it several times, each time finding something new and hilarious.

Lamb… the book that began a love affair

After reading Lamb, I went online to see what else Mr. Moore had written. To my delight there were several other titles in his catalogue. I bought them all and read them back to back in the order they were written. It’s hard to say which was my favourite, they all have complex stories, characters who are characters and a hilarious sense of humour. As a lover of King Lear, I do have a soft spot for Fool, which is the King Lear story, turned on its ear and told by the court jester.  Fluke also speaks to me as some of the novel is set near to where I grew up and it’s so unpredictable. The novels set in Pine Cove are also near and dear to me, as is the Vampire trilogy and their spin-off, A Dirty Job. See what I mean… no clear favourite.

A couple of weeks ago, Christopher Moore’s latest novel was released. It’s called Sacre Bleu and it’s Moore’s masterpiece about masterpieces and the men who painted them in late nineteenth century Paris. The book features several of my favourite painters of the era including Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Vincent Van Gogh. As always there is a thread of the supernatural brilliantly weaving its way through the plot.

A masterpiece about masterpieces.

Christopher Moore takes the reader on incredibly fun journeys of suspended disbelief  and escapism. I am always so stunned by the amount of research that is involved with each and every outing. Moore, like Gore Vidal and James Ellroy, seamlessly weaves real people and fictitious plot lines into a feast for the imagination.

Typically, a new Moore novel is published once a year, which makes him ridiculously prolific for the amount of research that must go into each book. Each time a new one comes out, I try so hard to pace myself and make that first read last as long as possible… I usually fail miserably and polish them off well within a week. I only wish he could write as fast as I can read.