This book title caught my eye (How fun! I thought), and dragged me happily into the world of Christopher Moore. I will never be the same again.
Carl Hiaasen is quoted on the book jacket: ‘Christopher Moore is a very sick man, in the very best sense of the word.’ Yeah, what he said. I mean it’s that funny kind of sick, sort of like Hiaasen on a higher, weirder level. Let me tell you about Love Nun’s characters, so you can see what I mean.
Tucker Case is your hero. He’s good-looking and sort of witless. He’s a man’s man who thinks things through only if it requires minimal effort. Tucker flies a plane for Mary Jean Cosmetics – yeah, a pink plane. The poor guy makes a couple of bad decisions (taking a hooker up to join the Mile High Club and crashing the plane are bad, right?) and ends up taking a job with a missionary and his wife on a Micronesian island to escape the wrath of Mary Jean.
Except on the way, he picks up a guide – a cross-dressing navigator named Kimi. Kimi has a pet fruit bat, Roberto, who hangs around and offers advice when it’s needed. And the island’s inhabitants aren’t really a missionary and his wife, but the Sorcerer and the Sky Priestess, who live in a very comfortable modern complex. (Actually, he’s a doctor and she’s a stripper who became a nurse.) Outside the complex is a village of cannibals called the Shark People. They read hand-me-down issues of People Magazine and worship the Sky Goddess, who claims to receive information from a certain person named Vincent. She doesn’t, of course, because Vincent is probably dead, but the ghost of Vincent Bennidetti, Captain, U.S.A.F. also lives on the island is not silent.
Okay, so you’re thinking, Huh? And I apologize, this isn’t a gory true crime or a stay-up-all-night thriller, it’s just a really well-written, convoluted, funny book. I commend Moore for his weird humor, great plot, and amusing characters and dialogue.
Tucker Case: You play golf here? Doctor Sebastian Curtis (the Sorcerer): I am a physician, Mr. Case. Even in the Pacific we have Wednesdays.
I expect Moore did a good deal of research for this book too, but it doesn’t scream in your face the way it does in other books. He’s subtle. He’s amazing. Get it. Read it.
- Goodreads rating – 3.80
- REVIEW – Catten