Shakespeare for Squirrels
Christopher Moore, 2020
HarperCollins
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062434029
Summary
Shakespeare meets Dashiell Hammett in this wildly entertaining murder mystery from Christopher Moore—an uproarious, hardboiled take on the Bard’s most performed play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Set adrift by his pirate crew, Pocket of Dog Snogging—last seen in The Serpent of Venice—washes up on the sun-bleached shores of Greece, where he hopes to dazzle the Duke with his comedic brilliance and become his trusted fool.
But the island is in turmoil.
Egeus, the Duke’s minister, is furious that his daughter Hermia is determined to marry Demetrius, instead of Lysander, the man he has chosen for her. The Duke decrees that if, by the time of the wedding, Hermia still refuses to marry Lysander, she shall be executed… or consigned to a nunnery.
Pocket, being Pocket, cannot help but point out that this decree is complete bollocks, and that the Duke is an egregious weasel for having even suggested it. Irritated by the fool’s impudence, the Duke orders his death.
With the Duke’s guards in pursuit, Pocket makes a daring escape. He soon stumbles into the wooded realm of the fairy king Oberon, who, as luck would have it, is short a fool. His jester Robin Goodfellow—the mischievous sprite better known as Puck—was found dead. Murdered.
Oberon makes Pocket an offer he can’t refuse: he will make Pocket his fool and have his death sentence lifted if Pocket finds out who killed Robin Goodfellow.
But as anyone who is even vaguely aware of the Bard’s most performed play ever will know, nearly every character has a motive for wanting the mischievous sprite dead.
With too many suspects and too little time, Pocket must work his own kind of magic to find the truth, save his neck, and ensure that all ends well.
A rollicking tale of love, magic, madness, and murder, Shakespeare for Squirrels is a Midsummer Night’s noir—a wicked and brilliantly funny good time conjured by the singular imagination of Christopher Moore. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 5, 1958
• Where—Toledo, Ohio, USA
• Education—Ohio State Univ., Brooks Inst. of Photography
• Awards—Quill Award, 2005 and 2006
• Currently—Hawaii and San Francisco, California
A 100-year-old ex-seminarian and a demon set off together on a psychotic road trip...
Christ's wisecracking childhood pal is brought back from the dead to chronicle the Messiah's "missing years"...
A mild-mannered thrift shop owner takes a job harvesting souls for the Grim Reaper...
Whence come these wonderfully weird scenarios? From the fertile imagination of Christopher Moore, a cheerfully demented writer whose absurdist fiction has earned him comparisons to master satirists like Kurt Vonnegut, Terry Pratchett, and Douglas Adams.
Ever since his ingenious debut, 1992's Practical Demonkeeping and his 2002 Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff , Moore has attracted an avid cult following. But, over the years, as his stories have become more multi-dimensional and his characters more morally complex, his fan base has expanded to include legions of enthusiastic general readers and appreciative critics.
Asked where his colorful characters come from, Moore points to his checkered job resume. Before becoming a writer, he worked at various times as a grocery clerk, an insurance broker, a waiter, a roofer, a photographer, and a DJ — experiences he has mined for a veritable rogue's gallery of unforgettable fictional creations. Moreover, to the delight of hardcore fans, characters from one novel often resurface in another. For example, the lovesick teen vampires introduced in 1995's Bloodsucking Fiends are revived (literally) for the 2007 sequel You Suck—which also incorporates plot points from 2006's A Dirty Job.
For a writer of satirical fantasy, Moore is a surprisingly scrupulous researcher. In pursuit of realistic details to ground his fiction, he has been known to immerse himself in marine biology, death rituals, Biblical scholarship, and Goth culture. He has been dubbed "the thinking man's Dave Barry" by none other than The Onion, a publication with a particular appreciation of smart humor.
As for story ideas, Moore elaborates on his website: "Usually [they come] from something I read. It could be a single sentence in a magazine article that kicks off a whole book. Ideas are cheap and easy. Telling a good story once you get an idea is hard." Perhaps. But, to judge from his continued presence on the bestseller lists, Chris Moore appears to have mastered the art.
Extras
From a 2006 Barnes & Noble interview:
• In researching his wild tales, Moore has done everything from taking excursions to the South Pacific to diving with whales. So what is left for the author to tackle? He says he'd like to try riding an elephant.
• One of the most memorably weird moments in Moore's body of work is no fictional invention. The scene in Bloodsucking Fiends where the late-night crew of a grocery store bowls with frozen turkeys is based on Moore's own experiences bowling with frozen turkeys while working the late shift at a grocery store.
• When asked what book influenced his career as a writer, he answered:
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. In Cannery Row, Steinbeck writes about very flawed people, but with great affection, and by doing so, shows us that it is our flaws that make us human, and that is what we share, that is our humanity. A friend of mine used to say, "He writes with the voice of a benevolent God." In the process, the book is also very funny. I think I saw that as a model, as a guide. I'd always written humor that was fairly edgy, but here was a guy writing with great power and gentle humor. I was moved and inspired." (Author bio Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
A hilariously noir tale of love, magic and murder.
USA Today
Buckle in for Shakespeare for Squirrels, an uproarious take on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream—transformed into a murder mystery.… A funny, fast-paced, and wild read.
Huffington Post
Moore’s amusing third installment to the Fool series…. In this raucous, crass, and innuendo-filled romp, Moore once again delivers light and derivative fun. This cheeky homage will please lovers of Shakespeare and camp.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Moore's trademark humor is on full display with his cast of strangely lovable characters. This is Shakespeare with an edge and will not only appeal to Moore's fans but garner new ones. —Kristen Stewart, Pearland Lib., Brazoria Cty. Lib. Syst., TX
Library Journal
(Starred review) It takes a certain amount of guts and wild abandon to recast a Shakespeare comedy as a hard-boiled detective story, but if anyone can pull it off, it’s master satirist Moore, whose gift for funny business apparently knows no bounds.
Booklist
(Starred review) Nobody writes mystery novels quite like Christopher Moore…. As hilarious as A Midsummer Night’s Dream is to begin with, Moore adds a contemporary dose of sly humor that I think would impress the Bard.
Bookpage
Manic parodist Moore… returns with a rare gift for Shakespeare fans…. A kicky, kinky, wildly inventive 21st-century mashup with franker language and a higher body count than Hamlet.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for SHAKESPEARE FOR SQUIRRELS … then take off on your own:
1. Well… is Shakespeare for Squirrels funny? Do you find Moore's humor puerile, cleverly witty, overly raunchy, laugh-out-loud hilarious?
2. Are you familiar with the Bard's original Midsummer Night's Dream? What elements of MsND does Moore build on, and where does he depart?
3. Characters seems to have their own agendas. Who manipulates whom for their own reasons?
4. Do you have a favorite character?
5. Who killed Puck… and why? A number of Athenians would love to have Puck dead; whom did you first suspect?
6. Talk about the way Moore breaks through the 4th wall in his Shakespearean spoof.
7. What do you think Shakespeare himself would have thought of Moore's homage?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)