The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
by Christopher Moore
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Book Summary Information
Author: Christopher MooreEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-05-25
ISBN: 0060735457
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780060735456
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
Book Review: Funny but not for everyone
Summary: 4 Stars
It's extremely hard to review a book whose title is longer and more obscure than most others. It's also exceedingly difficult to review an author whose style is as bizarre and unique as Christopher Moore's is.
Christopher Moore is one of my favorite authors so naturally I'm not going to give him a bad review but I'll try to be as objective as possible.
There's a LOT going on in this story, and a lot of it is very very strange. This book, and Moore in general, is not for everyone. If you read classic type literature or if Agatha Christie or John Grisham is your type of book then more than likely you'll find this sort of writing juvenile and too silly to enjoy. If you like silly, campy, bizarre, and offbeat kind of stories then you might just like Moore and you might just like Lust Lizard.
Moore is a humorist, to put it lightly, and his style and subject matter are not for everyone. Basically we have a small town, a large sea monster, a crazy ex actress, and an epidemic of horniness spreading throughout the town. Oh there's a lot more to this story than just that but to put things bluntly that's a bit of what's going on here.
Moore, to me, is very adept at creating interwoven storylines that feature multiple characters connected in some manner. These characters are also interesting, well-written, and very "real" in many ways. Some characters are just stereotypes of a typical (insert whatever here) that we're all familiar with, but that's the case with nearly every book. The characters in Lust Lizard are, for the most part, very diverse, interesting, and imaginative.
Moore either does a ton of research in his works or has a very active imagination. Maybe it's a combination of the two. I find his work to be extremely silly but at times very immersive. Lust Lizard isn't his best work but I really enjoyed the characters and while the story was very "out there" I was able to suspend disbelief and encounter the plot on the terms of the book. That is really key to enjoying Moore's work, you have to just accept the reality that the book is handing you. Not all of his works is as supernatural in orientation or as far-fetched, but for the most part you have to just roll with it.
Can you accept a giant sea monster that causes the entire town to go crazy horny with its pheremones? If you can, then you'll also accept the pot-smoking constable, the fish fetished pharmacist, and the slew of other odd yet interesting characters that this, and other Moore books, offer.
If, however, this is not the kind of book you're likely to enjoy than I wouldn't reccomend trying to force yourself to like it because your friend reccomended it, or because it has such high reviews on Amazon. I found each page to be entertaining and it's a rare thing when I'm actually upset to finish a book because I feel as though I got to know the characters and now I'll never see them again. I've felt that way with most of Moore's books that I've read.
So, wrapping up: If you like silly, campy stories and don't mind a bit of the outlandish then this might be a book worth looking at. At its heart the book is something of a detective story where our anti-hero, Constable Theo Crowe is trying to figure out exactly what is going wrong with his town. It's sort of a who-dunnit with a little "Outer Limits" type pheonomenon going on, a large supporting cast of interesting and diverse characters who each have a personality uniquely theirs and keeps the story moving. And, in my opinion, it's also VERY funny.
On the other hand, don't force the book on yourself because a friend suggested it, the reviews are good, or because Christopher Moore is gaining in popularity. This book is certainly not for everyone but just may be worth a look if you enjoy a touch of the bizarre.
Summary of The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
The town psychiatrist has decided to switch everybody in Pine Cove, California, from their normal antidepressants to placebos, so naturally?well, to be accurate, artificially?business is booming at the local blues bar. Trouble is, those lonely slide-guitar notes have also attracted a colossal sea beast named Steve with, shall we say, a thing for explosive oil tanker trucks. Suddenly, morose Pine Cove turns libidinous and is hit by a mysterious crime wave, and a beleaguered constable has to fight off his own gonzo appetites to find out what's wrong and what, if anything, to do about it.
Reading a Christopher Moore novel is a little like eating a potato chip--it's hard to stop at just one. And you don't have to look beyond the titles to understand the allure; who could pass up a book called Practical Demonkeeping or Island of the Sequined Love Nun? Each of Moore's tales skewers a particular literary genre. In Coyote Blue he nailed New Age fascination with Native American religion; in Blood-Sucking Fiends: A Love Story he put a new twist on the classic vampire tale. The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove is a companion piece to his first novel, the hilariously twisted horror story Practical Demonkeeping, and readers of that book will recognize the setting, Pine Cove, California. In addition, Moore includes plenty of his patented weird sex, occasional gross-out death, several off-kilter but nonetheless affecting love stories, and some fabulous secondary characters such as Mavis Sand:
Mavis first began augmenting her parts in the fifties, first out of vanity: breasts, eyelashes, hair. Later, as she aged and the concept of maintenance eluded her, she began having parts replaced as they failed, until almost half of her body weight was composed of stainless steel (hips, elbows, shoulders, finger joints, rods fused to vertebrae five through twelve), silicon wafers (hearing aids, pacemaker, insulin pump), advanced polymer resins (cataract replacement lenses, dentures), Kevlar fabric (abdominal wall reinforcement), titanium (knees, ankles), and pork (ventricular heart valve).In a nutshell, the plot revolves around a gigantic prehistoric lizard whose slumber deep beneath the ocean surface is interrupted by a radioactive leak from a nearby power plant. At the same time, a woman in Pine Cove hangs herself; the local psychiatrist (who has been prescribing antidepressants to everyone in town with gay abandon) decides the suicide was her fault and yanks everyone's medication; and an elderly black blues singer named Catfish Jefferson arrives to perform at the Head of the Slug saloon. Into this already strange brew mix one schizoid former B-movie starlet, a pot-head town constable, a bereaved local artist, a biologist tracking anomalous behavior in rats, a crooked sheriff, and a pharmacist with a bizarre sexual fixation on sea mammals, and you have a recipe for the kind of madness Moore does so well. --Alix Wilber
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