The Stupidest Angel
by Christopher Moore
(Morrow, $14.95, 276 pages, hardcover; published in November 2004.)
For his eighth novel, The Stupidest Angel, comic fantasist Christopher
Moore brings  back
a number of familiar characters from his previous works, while revisiting
Pine Cove, the Californian community introduced in his first novel,
Practical Demonkeeping. This is a fun bonus for faithful readers,
but The Stupidest Angel is a fully self-contained work that requires
no prior knowledge.
The angel Raziel is sent to Earth to perform this year's Christmas
miracle. He lands in Pine Cove, where nothing ever goes quite according
to plan. The accidental murder of a man in a Santa Claus suit by his
ex-wife initiates a series of catastrophic events that the angel, in
his divine stupidity, exacerbates while seeking to perform his miraculous
task.
The sprawling cast includes a talking fruit bat, a sword-wielding former
B-movie starlet who has trouble distinguishing fiction from reality,
a pot-smoking hippie cop, a heartbroken biologist involved in questionable
experiments, and many more bizarre outcasts.
About two-thirds in, Moore bravely turns this Christmas farce into
an unforgivingly savage (if still hilarious) horror tale. For the finale,
he reverts to classic comedic mode, and that's a bit of a disappointment.
The heightened tension thus dissipates instead of being resolved.
This one point aside, The Stupidest Angel is immensely rewarding
and amusing. Moore's satirical imagination is in sharp form, and every
page provokes waves upon waves of laughter.
Moore gets deep into the heads of his entire cast of crazy misfits,
presenting in full glory their skewed worldviews, creating a mosaic
of zany perspectives from which to enjoy the madcap proceedings. With
impeccable comic timing, he piles on surprising twists and cleverly
imagined scenes and situations, spicing everything up with exquisite
turns of phrases and punchy repartee.
The result is typical Moore: intelligent, witty, and entertaining.
Originally published in
The Montreal Gazette, Saturday, 11 December 2004.
Claude Lalumière's Fantastic Fiction
is a series of
capsule reviews first published in the Saturday Books
section of The Montreal Gazette.
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