three cups later....

Title: Lamb
Author: Christopher Moore
ISBN: 0380813815
Sample Chapter? Yes.

I was surprised by this book. I was expecting something funny, but not something thoughtful. As so often happens with humor, though, the best kind manages to sneak in some poignancy along the way.

Lamb is the kind of Gospel I would have read as a girl. It's a tale of sex, love, fist fights, kung fu, parables, and Eastern wisdom, all written with a quirky, Douglas-Adams-Meets-Monty-Python sense of humor.

There's a moment in any reinterpretation of a well-known story that I look for. It's the moment when I'm reading, and I know how things are going to turn out, and I desperately don't want them to go that way. I felt it when I read Mists of Avalon for the first time, and I felt it during Lamb.

I'd recommend it to anyone with a sense of humor looking for something to laugh at and maybe feel better about the world in general. It's an entertaining story with an appealing cast of characters, not the least of which is the narrator. The fact that every single one of the disciples and apostles winds up as a distinct, quirky character is a testimony to the writer's craft.

Excellent work.