A Dirty Job: A Novel | Christopher Moore
Charlie Asher is a pretty normal guy. A little hapless, somewhat neurotic, sort of a hypochondriac. He's what's known as a Beta Male: the kind of fellow who makes his way through life by being careful and constant -- you know, the one who's always there to pick up the pieces when the girl gets dumped by the bigger/taller/stronger Alpha Male. But Charlie's been lucky. He owns a building in the heart of San Francisco, and runs a secondhand store with the help of a couple of loyal, if marginally insane, employees. He's married to a bright and pretty woman who actually loves him for his normalcy. And she, Rachel, is about to have their first child. Yes, Charlie's doing okay for a Beta. That is, until the day his daughter, Sophie, is born. Just as Charlie -- exhausted from the birth -- turns to go home, he sees a strange man in mint-green golf wear at Rachel's hospital bedside, a man who claims that no one should be able to see him. But see him Charlie does, and from here on out, things get really weird. . . . People start dropping dead around him, giant ravens perch on his building, and it seems that everywhere he goes, a dark presence whispers to him from under the streets. Strange names start appearing on his nightstand notepad, and before he knows it, those people end up dead, too. Yup, it seems that Charlie Asher has been recruited for a new job, an unpleasant but utterly necessary one: Death. It's a dirty job. But hey, somebody's gotta do it. Christopher Moore, the man whose Lamb served up Jesus' "missing years" (with the funny parts left in), and whose Fluke found the deep humor in whale researchers' lives, now shines his comic light on the undiscovered country we all eventually explore -- death and dying -- and the results are hilarious, heartwarming, and a hell of a lot of fun.
-imaginative world-building aka what-the-fuckery
-Tender, sensitive moments between main character and loved ones, or remembering loved ones, occasionally made me cry
-palpable love for a place shown by author's descriptions of San Francisco neighborhoods and buildings
-reverence shown for hospice workers
-humourous banter among ridiculous happenings
-the skillful tying together of so many loose ends in that last 60 pages
4mo
What I didn't like (and cannot tell whether it is ignorance/callousness or purposeful provocation for shock value):
-leaning heavily into shallow racial stereotypes
-obsession with THOROUGHLY DEBUNKED alpha/beta male dynamic
-sacrifice of on page character development for pacing
-unnecessarily crude simile/metaphors
Currently on the fence about whether I will try reading from this author again. 4mo