A Dirty Job: A Novel by Christopher Moore Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of A Dirty Job: A Novel
Book Review: Forced humor (and one abomination of a sentence)
Summary: 2 Stars
So I'm reading "A Dirty Job." I'm about a 100 pages in, and it's OK so far, though not nearly as good as I thought it would be. The story is interesting and I love the premise, but I found a lot of the humor to be extremely forced into the dialog. The situation descriptions by Moore were done well (went to kick some ass but couldn't find a parking spot!)and certainly kept things sharp, but I still cringed at some of the things these characters would say. Not because I was offended or anything like that. It just reeked of "trying too hard" sometimes.
That was fine. I planned to keep going until I got to this sentence:
"Not far away, as the crow flies, under Columbus Avenue, in a wide pipe junction where several storm sewers met, Orcus, the Ancient One, paced, bent over like a hunchback, the heavy spikes that jutted from his shoulders scraping the sides of the pipe, throwing off sparks and the smell of smoldering peat."
How is that one sentence? It has 9 commas in it! That's one of the most poorly constructed lines I've ever read it a published book. AH!
I had to put the book down for now, but I'll probably go back to it. This is my first Moore book, and will be my last if I see another literary abomination like that.
Book Review: Funny ...but uneven
Summary: 3 Stars
I enjoyed this book tremendously. I mean, what could be more entertaining than death? (I think Ingmar Bergman will back me on that one.) In A Dirty Job, Christopher Moore not only provides a nice, healthy dose of death, he also gives you Death Merchants, Forces of Darkness, the Illuminatus, a bunch of 14-inch-high cobbled-together zombie animals dressed to the nines, and a toddler who can kill people by saying the word "kitty."
Sound silly? Well, it is. And that is the saving grace of this book. The plot is (roughly) as follows: Charlie Asher, a shy retiring junk store owner, unwittingly becomes a Merchant of Death, a job for which he is roundly ill suited. Odd things soon start to happen (as if becoming a Merchant of Death weren't strange enough). Foreboding black shapes start to ooze over the California landscape, hideous voices threaten him from sewer gratings, and two hellhounds (who enjoy bubble baths but are otherwise thoroughly demonic) show up in his apartment. Various hilarious adventures ensue, as you can well imagine with that set-up.
Although the book had some great laugh-out-loud moments, and lots of snappy repartee, it seemed as if Moore was undecided about what he was trying to do with this story. One the one hand, he intended it to be funny and light-hearted, which it was. But on the other, it was clear that he was also trying to make a serious point about hospice, about the process of dying, and about spirituality. Unfortunately, those two purposes clashed. In many places the characters suddenly broke out into long-winded sermons about Eastern spiritual practices, which served only to slow the pace. (And knocked the plot off course.) And towards the end of the book, Moore seemed to entirely lose track of his story, jumping from scene to scene without incorporating the main plot line. When the inevitable showdown between the Forces of Darkness and the Illuminatus occurred, it was a let down.
There are other indications that Moore wrote this book in a hurry - the main character is highly inconsistent. If he's a Beta Male, where do all the heroics come from? In any event the Beta Male thing is overworked and unnecessary. The sex scenes are thrown in helter-skelter, also without much relevance, and far too kinky to be funny. There is enough gore to classify parts of this book as horror. Some of the plot elements are so contrived as to be annoying (Charlie's sister conveniently forgets to give him an important message, his assistant conveniently fails to give him an important package, etc). And, at the last minute Moore tosses in several new characters with puzzling inconsistencies - e.g. a lipless zombie-squirrel who can't pronounce "p" but does just fine with other labials ("w", "b," "f"). Little things like that can destroy your confidence in a zombie.
All in all, A Dirty Job was entertaining. But with a little more thought on the part of the author, and a tad more editorial input, this could have been a truly wonderful read.
Book Review: Funny entertaining book
Summary: 4 Stars
This book was recommended to me as sort of a weird, twisted, but funny book. That it is. The first time I read it (from the library), I laughed so hard, and I kept having to share snipbits of it. I decided I needed to own it, because it was just too funny, and I knew I would read it time and time again. But, maybe I just wasn't feeling it the second time, because I hardly laughed at all. I dunno. I still think it's a funny book, but less funny and some slightly annoying things (the whole talk of beta males got boring after a paragraph) came out. That's why only 4 stars.Book Review: Funny! Like bear.
Summary: 5 Stars
Charlie Asher, a beta-male, consignment shop owner and new daddy, is reluctantly and unwittingly recruited for the job of death's helper (notice the small case "d".) Unfotunately for Charlie, the position of death's helper comes with very little training and much of what he needs to know comes on a trial and error basis....with the emphasis on error! Throw in a couple of "sewere harpies" hellbent on de-railing Charlie's new career, a couple of hell hounds, a seven-foot black man named "Minty Fresh" (apparently his mother had a fixation with toothcare products), Charlie's daughter Sophie..who's smarter than the average bear, "squirrel people" and you have the recipe for another hilarious Moore novel.
Avid Moore readers will recognize some of the characters in this book from prior stories and there's one very clever and interesting scene where an encounter with another one of Moore's characters from Bloodsucking Fiends is narrated from Charlie's perspective.
Anything that Moore writes is recommended, in my opinion, and "A Dirty Job" is no exception. Pick up. Read. Enjoy.
Book Review: Good
Summary: 4 Stars
Got the book with in a few days of my order. Everybody was happy.