Where Everyone's a Mess

Sacré Bleu by Christopher Moore
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not really my thing. And I like Christopher Moore.

I like the connections with all of the artists in Paris. It's cool seeing images of the artwork spread all around. And I enjoyed the last 50 pages or so.

Most of this, though, is just boring, and the plot doesn't work for me. It took me forever to finish the book. There's kind of a mystery--what exactly is going on with the Colorman, the woman connected to him, and the artists? Van Gogh has just died, and so it's a murder mystery, a little bit. (Spoiler: The two odd characters go way, way back, we learn, even to prehistory, and have been working among artists for all that time, inspiring and pushing them and, possessing them, and killing them...)

But the plot takes such a long time getting around to connecting any dots for the reader. Sheesh. Mostly, we follow obnoxious (slightly funny) artists around Paris as they talk about drinking, sex, and painting. The ending is a bit like a fantasy novel, which is good, and it moved faster there, but it barely redeems what is, for me, a slog of a novel.

I suspect that people who know more about art and artists, who have some notion of who these people are as individuals, will enjoy this more. I found it mostly tedious. If I didn't already like the author (which is one reason I gave it a 3), this would have been a DNF for me.

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