Ashley's Bathroom Reading!

So, for the new feature on the blog, I present to you: ASHLEY'S BATHROOM READING!!!! 

What's this? you might ask. Well, it's basically like a book review, but subtly different. I read a lot, and I don't have a lot of time, so one of the best places for me to read is in the bathroom. Theoretically. Usually I just end up starting reading while I'm brushing my teeth or drying my hair or . . . whatever . . . and wander out of the bathroom, book in hand. And then I waste hours on the couch reading my "bathroom book". BUT THE PRINCIPLE REMAINS UNCHANGED. Typically I like books that are light, entertaining, and can be read in short snatches without losing the thread of the story.

The other unique thing about books I choose for this is that I give myself permission to stop reading them if I don't like them. It's my equivalent of a Friday Night Kill Spot on TV - if a book gets downgraded to Bathroom Reading from regular reading, I'm thinking about kicking it. On the other hand, some bathroom books I've absolutely LOVED (Good Omens was a recent bathroom book, true facts, and I'm totally obsessed with that book). So just because a book hits this category doesn't mean I disliked it, or was lukewarm toward it.

Anyway, the first book in this installment is: Fool by Christopher Moore!

Chris would be honored by this, I'm pretty sure. Anyway, I do love Christopher Moore, but I really could not get in to Fool the first time I read it, when it was first published. So I let it hang out for a few years and just now tried to pick it up again. Frequently books like this become bathroom books - if I still don't like them, I just stop again and end up donating them to a local library.

Happily, this was not the case with my second attempt at Fool. The book is not for everyone - it's vulgar, it's dark, it's smutty and it's sacrilegious to the work of Shakespeare, but my goodness is it hilarious. The book basically takes place during Shakespeare's 'King Lear', but it's re-told from the point of view of the faithful, trusty court jester, Pocket.

Pocket is the kind of hero I can really get behind, and by that I mean he is pretty much a villainous, traitorous anti-hero. You get to watch as Pocket goes from relative complacency (with a dash of mild worry about Lear's sanity) to heartbroken vindictiveness, to absolute outraged fury, to, once again, happy complacency. I do absolutely love characters like this - TVTropes refers to them as Magnificent Bastards, and the name is so very rightly earned in Pocket's case. Because he's magnificent, oh yes, and a total bastard.

I'm sure Shakespeare didn't really consider that Lear's fool might be a conniving, passively homicidal man who carries daggers around with him, but nevertheless Moore pulls it off well enough to be funny, if not totally convincing. It did occur to me while I was reading that Fool sort of felt like, and could be perceived as, an attempt to recapture the same glory he got with Lamb: take a well-known, "sacred" work and put your own off-color flare on it and let it run. Lamb pulled it off gorgeously; no, I wasn't convinced that Jesus really had a best friend named Biff that ran around with him on fabulous adventures, but I laughed and I appreciated the New Testament more after reading that book, rather than losing my faith or being offended or what have you. Fool, I think, does try to do this again, but it's less successful. I certainly didn't gain a new appreciation for the message or the story of 'King Lear', and if I were to go to a performance I don't think I'd have a greater appreciation of that either. Sure, I loved the book and thought it was funny, but the book doesn't add anything to 'Lear', and it doesn't increase your awareness of some of the more appreciable aspects of the play. Where Lamb was all at once funny, touching, tragic and thoughtful, Fool only really manages to capture the funny and the tragic - it makes up for the touching and the thoughtful with vulgarity and sexiness, which is not necessarily less enjoyable, but certainly doesn't give the reader the same experience.

I did have a few issues with the speech - Moore tried to blend colloquial American English and British English with Olde English and I actually think the book might have suffered for it. The British phrases were subtitled, which lent more of an awkward and stilted feeling to the use, and overall the dialogue ended up feeling like an uncomfortable jumble when he tried too hard to incorporate the "local flavor" elements. To put it another way, I had a very hard time "hearing" the characters speak when these turns of phrase were thrown around - they seemed garbled and off-mark. It's not a big issue, and it is absolutely not enough to turn me off of the book, but it did grate a little.

That said, I loved the pacing of the book. I have the worst time with pacing, as an author, and Moore really pulled it off well. Seriously, I'm considering studying the man on this: we all have something to learn from every book, and by God if I learn how to pace my books better and handle the passage of time more gracefully that will not be the worst thing that could happen. He handled the action so that it didn't seem rushed or too fast, but it didn't drag either. The plot sidelines were balanced nicely with actual plot elements to provide relief from the otherwise heavy story, without overwhelming the story and distracting me. And, this being a book I read in short snatches rather than longer sessions, I was able to keep up with the story without losing track of it - here and there I had to read a few pages over again to clear up something I was confused about, or felt I'd missed, but overall I could pick it up and put it down as I pleased without it being too complicated.

Final Thoughts?: Fool was generally a really good book. I does try a little too hard, I think, to recapture the recipe of Lamb, and the dialogue gets uncomfortable at times, but overall these issues are small and do not take away from the actual fun entertainment the book provides. And since it's a humorous fiction work, well, fun entertainment is the name of the game, isn't it? So well done, Christopher Moore: I tip my hat to you once again, and all your profane and hilarious glory. Keep 'em coming, 'cause I'm out now.