The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
by Christopher Moore
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Book Summary Information
Author: Christopher MooreEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-05-25
ISBN: 0060735457
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780060735456
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
Book Review: Pine Cove rocks the casbah, and in turn has it rocked by Steve
Summary: 5 Stars
Christopher Moore continues to astound me. I unfortunately came upon him rather late and my first CM novel was his Shakespearean comic opus, "Fool." After two pages I realized that my personal library had an unexcusable omission, and I've been reading his books as fast as I can snag them.
"The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove" takes place in the hallowed tourist trap of Pine Grove, a bucolic former whaling village somewhere on the North-Central-ish California coast that we first met in "Practical Demonkeeping." Precise geography is not required - Pine Grove is a unique little hamlet, but it is also Everytown. Packed with Moore's merry band of eccentrics, losers, geniuses and criminals, Pine Grove is home to the same batch of neuroses and shortcomings as every small town in America.
Add to the mix Moore's ingenious comic sensibilities, and you've got a darn good book. It doesn't matter if Moore's writing about a man's struggle to rid himself of his external demons (see "Practical Demonkeeping"), fighting off an unexpected plague of gossipy zombies at Yuletide ("The Stupidest Angel"), or the amorous advances of a gender-shifting self-regenerating dragon (this book) - his books bring the yucks, the sex, and insight into the human condition.
Within the pages of "Lust Lizard," you will meet a classic CM Beta Male, a semi-deranged C-movie actress still in fighting condition from her direct-to-video Warrior Babe films, a pharmacist with a bizarre fetish for marine mammals, a corrupt cop or three, a cybernetic organism doubling as the local bartender, and several more extreme characters. Each character has their true colors revealed for all to see by the arrival of Steve (he looks like a Steve), a five-thousand year-old sea monster drawn with amorous appetites and the ability to manipulate the libido of its prey. Lust lizard - get it? You will love them or hate these folks, but you will have strong feelings for each of them by the end of this book.
It's fair to say that you could start with this book if you've never read any of Moore's books before. Yet I would recommend starting with "Practical Demonkeeping" before reading this book so you can have some background for some of the characters and the town itself. "PD" is terrific, by the way, so you're not exactly losing anything.
But if you haven't read Moore before, grab a book and start - you and your friends will be glad you did.
Summary of The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
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.
Reading a Christopher Moore novel is a little like eating a potato chip--it's hard to stop at just one. And you don't have to look beyond the titles to understand the allure; who could pass up a book called Practical Demonkeeping or Island of the Sequined Love Nun? Each of Moore's tales skewers a particular literary genre. In Coyote Blue he nailed New Age fascination with Native American religion; in Blood-Sucking Fiends: A Love Story he put a new twist on the classic vampire tale. The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove is a companion piece to his first novel, the hilariously twisted horror story Practical Demonkeeping, and readers of that book will recognize the setting, Pine Cove, California. In addition, Moore includes plenty of his patented weird sex, occasional gross-out death, several off-kilter but nonetheless affecting love stories, and some fabulous secondary characters such as Mavis Sand:
Mavis first began augmenting her parts in the fifties, first out of vanity: breasts, eyelashes, hair. Later, as she aged and the concept of maintenance eluded her, she began having parts replaced as they failed, until almost half of her body weight was composed of stainless steel (hips, elbows, shoulders, finger joints, rods fused to vertebrae five through twelve), silicon wafers (hearing aids, pacemaker, insulin pump), advanced polymer resins (cataract replacement lenses, dentures), Kevlar fabric (abdominal wall reinforcement), titanium (knees, ankles), and pork (ventricular heart valve).In a nutshell, the plot revolves around a gigantic prehistoric lizard whose slumber deep beneath the ocean surface is interrupted by a radioactive leak from a nearby power plant. At the same time, a woman in Pine Cove hangs herself; the local psychiatrist (who has been prescribing antidepressants to everyone in town with gay abandon) decides the suicide was her fault and yanks everyone's medication; and an elderly black blues singer named Catfish Jefferson arrives to perform at the Head of the Slug saloon. Into this already strange brew mix one schizoid former B-movie starlet, a pot-head town constable, a bereaved local artist, a biologist tracking anomalous behavior in rats, a crooked sheriff, and a pharmacist with a bizarre sexual fixation on sea mammals, and you have a recipe for the kind of madness Moore does so well. --Alix Wilber
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