Try Christmas with cannibals on for size

by Julia Watts

Most holiday-themed books have a lot in common with the cheap boxes of chocolate-covered cherries that show up on store shelves this time of year. Their glitzy packaging is an effort to entice desperate gift shoppers and to disguise a product which is too sweet and gooey, with an unpleasant aftertaste.

Given the fact that most holiday books have all the appeal of curdled eggnog, Christopher Moore’s new Christmas-themed novel The Stupidest Angel (Morrow, $14.95) brings some welcome comic relief to a cloying, sentimental genre. The fact that Moore’s book is not standard Yuletide fare is apparent in the “Author’s Warning” that precedes Chapter 1:�“If you’re buying this book as a gift for your grandma or a kid, you should be aware that it contains cusswords, as well as tasteful depictions of cannibalism and people in their forties having sex. Don’t blame me. I told you.”

Sex and cannibalism don’t even scratch the surface of the surreal comic world Moore creates. Try this plot development on for size: The dull-witted heavenly host who is the source of the title is sent to the quirky town of Pine Cove, Calif., to perform a Christmas miracle.�But since he wears a trench coat to disguise his angelic attributes and keeps telling people he’s looking for “a child,” he is mistaken for a pedophile.

Or how about this one? While trying to dig up a Christmas tree, Laney gets in a fight with her ex-husband Dale, who is wearing a Santa suit for a party.�In the course of the scuffle, Laney accidentally kills Dale with a shovel—an act witnessed by 7-year-old Joshua Barker, who is then convinced that Santa Claus is dead and Christmas is ruined. The Christmas wish little Josh makes after witnessing this accident has less than Frank Capra-esque results.

It’s hard to compare Christopher Moore’s comic stylings with those of other authors. At times he smacks of Kurt Vonnegut at his most bizarre; other times his playfulness with language is reminiscent of a less hippie-fied Tom Robbins. Mostly, though, Moore’s style is entirely his own, and it overflows with laugh-out-loud funny lines.�Moore describes Pine Cove’s Salvation Army volunteers:� “Dressed in their red suits and fake beards, they rang their bells like they were going for dog-spit gold at the Pavlov Olympics.” There’s also the snarky political satire in his description of the video game Josh has played past his curfew:�“He’d been playing Barbarian George’s Big Crusade on the Play Station at his friend Sam’s house, and they’d gotten into infidel territory and killed thousands of the ‘Rackies, but the game just didn’t have any way to exit.”

Fans of Moore’s other books will recognize some of the characters in The Stupidest Angel from previous Moore titles (and what titles!) such as The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove and Island of the Sequined Love Nun. Readers of The Stupidest Angel who haven’t read Moore’s other works may find themselves making an emergency run to the bookstore.

That being said, some readers may find The Stupidest Angel’s break-neck pace and point of view shifts a little confusing, but any confusion will be mitigated by the fits of uncontrollable laughter that the book’s characters and situations provoke. It is wise, however, to bear the book’s author’s warning in mind. Christmas books that feature cannibalism, dead men in Santa suits, psychotic B-movie queens, and talking fruitbats may be offensive to some readers. But then again, do people who are that seriously humor impaired really deserve to be on your holiday gift list in the first place?

December 16, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 51 © 2004 Metro Pulse