Stupid, Stupid Angel!
I just finished reading a novel, The Stupidest Angel, by Christopher Moore. It’s subtitled A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror.
For me, Christmas terror is having to put up with store decorations that show up in September (I’m talking to you, Costco and Best Buy!), listening to Bill O’Reilly’s endless bleating about a so-called “war” on Christmas, and not being able to find a parking space at the mall when all I want to do is run in and get some more black candles for that evening’s goat sacrifice. (Hmmm … goats bleat … O’Reilly bleats … I just had a brilliant idea!)
The book’s reviews were generally quite favorable, so I thought I’d take a chance on it. I found this book on my enabler’s website (Amazon). Yes, I have a book addiction. At least my addiction doesn’t cause hearing loss.
It’s a humorous novel. It’s not really laugh-out-loud funny anywhere, but it has a lot of amusing passages. I especially like the author’s many humorous descriptions and turns of phrase. Just one example:
Later, after church, they will try to coax Roberto into a box so they can later cook him and serve him with saimen noodles. Although he escapes, the incident traumatizes the young bat and he does not speak for years.
The story takes place in the days leading up to Christmas in a small coastal California town near Big Sur. A drunk Santa Claus impersonator gets himself killed. The perpetrator decides to conceal the crime with the help of an out-of-towner. The local cop then has to figure out what happened to Santa and who did it.
That summary leaves out all of the fun details. One of those details is the title character, an angel sent to Earth to perform a Christmas miracle. Since that angel isn’t the brightest halo on the cloud, mayhem and hilarity ensue. My only complaint about this character is that the author does a poor job of portraying him as actually stupid. To me, the angel comes across more as a George W. Bush bottom-of-the-class type, instead of a Forest Gump-like “special class” type.
One of my favorite characters is the dog, who thinks of his master solely as the “Food Guy”, and one of his friends as the “Emergency Backup Food Guy.”
Anyway, the book is not quite as funny as I had been hoping, based on the hype. I did like it, and I give it a qualified recommendation. Give it a try if you like to read Christmas stories about: a dysfunctional town, unique characters, a guy who wears a fruit bat for a hat, a fruit bat that may or may not talk, whacking Santa with a shovel, Kendra the Warrior Babe of the Outland, a cop who grows pot, a biologist who glues high-voltage electrodes to his scrotum, running a Volvo over an angel, and an angel who looks like a member of the trenchcoat mafia.
Oh yeah, and zombies. (“Brains!!!!”)
