I'm not sure how this book ended up in my bookshelves, but there it was. As you may be able to guess from the title, this is not serious literature. The story takes place in a small town on the coast, where a 5,000 year old sea monster has been awakened. He has a taste for warm blooded animals, so he proceeds into town to snack on the townfolk. The unlikely hero of the story is the pothead town constable Theo Crowe. Theo and his friends decide to help the sea monster return to the sea, so he doesn't get hunted down and killed. Fortunately for everyone involved, the sea monster has only eaten badguys, so it's easy to root for him. Complete nonsense, this is a quick read, which leaves the reader as soon as the last page has been turned. Mindless escapism. 0061770515 Valerie Riordan, the sole psychotherapist in Pine Cove, California, has switched all her patients' antidepressants to placebos -- a reaction to the apparent suicide of Bess Leander, one of her patients, who, Val thought, might have lived had Val done more talk therapy and less drug therapy. As a result, business is booming at The Head of the Slug, the local Blues bar, run by Mavis, whose clients swear that underneath her ancient, wrinkled, liver-spotted skin there lurks the Terminator. Problem: those lonely Blues notes from her new hire, Catfish Jefferson, have attracted the attention of an enormous, 5,000-year-old marine reptile named Steve who has a thing for petroleum tanker trucks.
With the advent of Steve, Pine Cove suddenly turns lustful and is hit by a weird crime wave with no understandable explanation. So Theophilus Crowe, the town constable, must find out what's wrong and what to do about it.
Enter all our other old friends from other novels of Moore's -- Molly Michon, the aging but still-beautiful and deadly Warrior Babe of the Outland (well, she was, until a stupid accident that wasn't her fault left her with a scar that got her canned by the movie studio); Mavis, proprietor of The Head of the Slug (originally named The Head of the Wolf, but the local Greens decided the name was cruel to animals and forced her to change it); Dr. Val, the aforementioned psychiatrist; H. P., proprietor of H. P.'s Cafe, which features delicious delicacies such as Eggs Sothoth; Skinner, the happy-go-lucky idiot dog belonging to the Food Guy, biologist Gabe Fenton; and numerous others. Enter also some local villians who do meet timely, deserved, and hilarious ends, such as Sheriff John Burton, whose ranch hides a nasty secret, and who has been blackmailing pothead Theophilus Crowe into being the town constable for years; and Joseph Leander, the late Bess Leander's adulterous, murderous husband. With a less-than-together supporting cast of -- well, check them out for yourself.
As one reviewer said, Christopher Moore must have been laughing his head off while writing The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, and likely taking hits of nitrous oxide between sentences. The title alone is worth the price of the book, which could be substituted most successfully for every antidepressant in the pharmacy.
As a bonus, the biomedical and scientific aspects of this novel were researched down to the bare bones by the author. All that is missing from it is a lawsuit by Toho Productions for inappropriate appropriation of their star character (we know who he is!) -- and that may be forthcoming at any time. 0061770515 The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove is a warm-hearted probe into the meaning of inter-species fornication; Fornication with giant lizards, sea mammals, gas trucks, and a ex-soft porn movie actress in Xena costumes with broad swords. In other words, just another day in Christopher Moore's brain. The author has his brain working over-time in this silly little romp. Maybe a little too silly even for Moore. Yet it remains very funny and entertaining. Moore revives some of his Pine Cove residents including H. P., Mavis, and the grass smoking sheriff, Theopolis Crow. Add Molly Michon, a has-been starlet and Steve, a perpetually horny sea lizard and you get the idea this is not exactly Cannery Row. But if you can't handle kinky situations and over-the-top slapstick comedy, why are you even considering a Christopher Moore novel? 0061770515 2.5
You have to be high to read this.
Or drunk.
Or both. Yes, both would be best. Otherwise, the sheer amount of exaggerations would make you crazy.
With its title alone, you have to assume you'd have to suspend your disbelief completely. I don't mind that at all. It is supposed to be a silly book after all. But you don't get any respite from all the exaggerations. It's just goes on an on, one crazy situation or a person after another. After a while one gets tired of it.
I wonder if I am too serious to appreciate the type of humour in this book.
0061770515 I just finished reading this, and as I explained to my fiancee last night when I couldn't stop reading it: it does not hold up the qualities that are necessary for me to classify a book a good book; however it is great escapism. The characters are not real. The author does nor reveal anything to me in the telling of the story. He has awareness that he is writing escapism and I like that. He is not your typical escapism writer like James Patterson or John Grisham who turn out one load of crap after another, but never stop taking themselves seriously.
I like that his books are fun to read and I typically laugh out loud a few times during the read. Compared to my normal depressing books, it is nice to laugh and not think too much about everything he is trying to say.
If you have read any of Moore's books you know exactly what I am talking about. This one was better than the last two in the vampire series he was doing, but not as good as some of his more well known books.
I recommend it, if you are in a rut and just want to laugh a little, this book is great for that. 0061770515
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. The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove (Pine Cove, #2)
Christopher Moore has a twisted sense of humor, his narrative style is Kurt Vonnegut meets the Adams family with a dose of John Steinbeck and a Faulkner chaser.
Very funny.
This one is set in his Pine Cove creation and concerns a Puff the magic dragon with a decidedly lascivious nature.
0061770515 “The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove” by Christopher Moore takes place in Pine Cove a small Pacific coast town of 5000. Over a third of the population served by local Dr. Valerie Riordan, has been rendered dependent on antidepressants.
Obsessive/compulsive cleaning freak, Bess Leander, is found hanged from a calico cloth rope, a possible suicide, and her friend Val fears she may have been overmedicating. Investigating the death, is the stoned town constable, Theophilus Crowe.
Val next blackmails fish-fetishist and local pharmacist Winston Krauss into giving all antidepressant users in town placebos instead of their regular medication. As the antidepressants wear off, a hilariously uncontrollable erotic revolution takes place in the formerly groggy and uninspired population. A simultaneous nuclear plant leak into the ocean awakens a serotonin-deficit sea beast named Steve, who descends on the town, who is disguised occasionally as a double-wide mobile home.
Enter Delta guitarist Catfish Jefferson who has recently been hired to play at the local ‘Head of the Slug Saloon’, where his marvelously sad blues has added to the local scene’s seductive narcosis. Fifty years ago down on the Delta, Catfish first met the Sea Beast, the hundred foot creature, Steve, that loved his steel guitar sound and has now risen from the depths.
This is laugh out loud funny and a bit zany at times.
This copy is signed by the author Christopher Moore. 0061770515 Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: 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.
My Review: Am I too old for this humor to make me do more than chuckle quietly and without conviction? Has my curmudgeonly mask become my face?
I'd say an instant yes and move on, light of heart and wreathed in smiles, were it not for this:
I think there was always some scrawny dreamer sitting at the edge of the firelight, who had the ability to imagine dangers, to look into the future in his imagination and see possibilities, and therefore survived to pass his genes on to the next generation.
Yep.
So up from the Mount of Despairing Good-Enough books! Yay, right? Um. I think, though, it's past time to take a flensing knife and cut to the heart of the Moore Mystique.
Let me know what y'all find. I ain't got so much as a sniff at a clue. Why does Good-Enough transmogrify into sales and gales of laughter?! Quick, someone post an excuse for laughing above the level a work deserves, I'm afraid my face will freeze this way! 0061770515 Christopher Moore is, as always, a genius when it comes to the absurd and warped sense of humor that I enjoy oh-so-much. Who else could give us a plot that includes all of the following: a former B movie starlet who still lives the life of her most famous role as Kendra: Warrior Babe of the Wasteland, a sea beast with a vendetta against a wayward bluesman, a psychologist who decides to put the entire town on placebo anti-depressants instead of the real deal, a pharmacist with a fish fetish (yes, that's right), meth labs and drug dealers, interspecies love, and occasional chapters told from the point of view of a labrador retriever named Skinner? This is not for everyone--serious people need not apply. The plot is wacky and unbelievable; in other words, vintage Moore. While I really enjoyed the book and laughed often, the only reason I gave it 3 stars is that, when compared with his other books, I didn't like it quite as much as Bloodsucking Fiends and Fluke (Or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings). However, the novel is well worth the time of anyone who already enjoys Moore or is discovering him for the first time. 0061770515 A pretty good humorous Cal-contemporary fantasy -- which opens with a sea monster mounting a gasoline tank-truck, with, well, explosive results: ... She was gone now, but [the Sea Beast] said, 'A simple No would have sufficed...'
The Sea Beast (who's named 'Steve', by Kendra, Warrior Babe of the Outlands) came to the surface in the middle of a kelp bed, his massive head breaking through strands of kelp like a zombie pickup truck breaking sod as it rises from the grave. Laurell K. Hamilton, take note.
'Steve' stirs up the animal spirits of the low-seritonin residents of Pine Cove (aka Cambria) -- of which there are many, as the town's sole psychiatrist has cut off their Prozac, surreptitiosly substituting sugar-pill placebos, with the connivance of the town's sole pharmacist, who satisfies his carnal urges with an inflatable dolphin in his bathtub....
[Dr. Val] came out of her office to find her new receptionist, Chloe, furiously masturbating, her steno chair squeaking like a tortured squirrel.
Sorry, Chloe said, a bit later... I just want to stop. My wrist hurts a little. Do you think I could have carpal tunnel?
Dr. Val, fearful of a workman's comp lawsuit, prescribes oven mitts, strapped on with duct tape.
Well, it's all good clean dopey romantic fun, though with more smiles than laughs, for me anyway, and not quite as good as this outline sounds -- but humor is tricky, and some of you will love it. 3,5 stars, by memory. Review written 2000. 0061770515
