Review - Fluke by Christopher Moore

Preamble

I listened to the audiobook version of Fluke narrated by Bill Irwin. It was on sale on Chirp Audiobooks, and let it be known that Irwin loves to pronounce his ‘h’s when it comes to words that start with ‘wh.’ Like ‘whale,’ which occurs repeatedly throughout the novel. I felt like my Grade Three teacher who inculcated the ‘proper’ consonant-flipping pronunciation was reading the book to me.

A note about my reviews: I consider myself an appreciator, not a critic. I know first-hand what goes into the creation of art – the blood, the sweat, the tears, the risk. I also know that art appreciation is subjective and lernt good what mama tell’t me – if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. I’m not a school marm grading a spelling test – I’m a reader who enjoys reading. If a book is entertaining, well-written, and I get absorbed into it, five out of five. I have gone as low as three stars – anything less than that and I will not review a book (chances are I DNFed anyway). Regardless, I wouldn’t even put a star rating system on my reviews but for the reality of storefronts like Amazon.

Take from that what you will.

Review – 5/5

Shoes off in the whale! And don't try and make a break for the anus.

Fluke is one of the most effed up books I have ever read. I don’t even need to think twice about it – it’s so bizarre and hilarious and well-done that I was actually a little bit surprised. Though I haven’t read all of Moore’s work, my favourite Christopher Moore book is Fool – the whole Pocket series gets me – and, as a bawdy tale, it’s filled with puerile and juvenile sex jokes to go along as a refreshing counterpoint to Moore’s considerable wit. There are fewer dick jokes (though plenty) in Fluke, but it was incredibly laugh out loud funny, almost as much so as Fool.

The story of Fluke itself starts out rather unassumingly, with a marine biologist catching sight of a display on a humpback whale’s fluke (tail) that leaves him wondering whether he’s losing it. It says ‘BITE ME’ in big block lettering, which is only the start of the mystery that unfolds over the course of the book.

I like books that read like this – mysterious, with plenty of twists and turns. Every time you think you’ve kind of got something figured out, Moore upends it by upping the ante. The intrigue leans more towards sci-fi than it does towards fantastical, though the scope of what happens in the story is somewhat suggestive of the second. One of the frequently riffed-upon ideas is the Arthur C. Clarke thing: sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Or maybe it’s sufficiently ancient technology in this context?

But it’s more than that. If you read between the lines, Moore gets at some of the real thrust of magic. It’s even in the title itself, which is defined at the beginning of the story – it’s not just defined as a whale tail, it’s the improbable stroke of luck. Is reality random noise? Or is it something more… ordered? There is some discussion of God and of theories of evolution, but the lines get so blurred that one begins to question things.

Moore definitely skates the existential question line with a fair bit of precision, not letting it detract from the plot nor from the laughs. The characters themselves are ridiculous, with the straight man protagonist Quinn as the most staid of the lot. Everyone is a caricature, yet Moore has this fantastic habit of humanizing all of his weirdos. I particularly liked Kona, the white guy from Jersey pretending to be a mix of Hawaiian and Rastafarian that seems somewhat prophetic of the rise of the Island Boys. Speaking of boys, there was also the whaley boys, human whale hybrid creatures who wave around their retractable dongs like they’re fencing masters. The antagonistic science community, the ‘old broad’ benefactrix, even Amy, Quinn’s aged-slang-talking love interest – they’re all hilarious and zany set pieces for this absolutely bonkers tale.

Yes, zany. I think zany is a good way to describe Moore’s Fluke. It’s not nearly as linguistically as over the top as Fool, but the situations and the conversations are just too good. Moore is a master of his craft, an author idol of mine, and he has written a marvelous story with Fluke. It makes me want to finish off reading the rest of his library, to be perfectly honest. And I think I’ll get right on it.