Choice Slices of Entertainment, Travel, & the General WTF of the World

Christopher Moore’s latest book, Fool, is a retelling of Shakespeare’s play King Lear through the eyes of Pocket, the court jester. Being one of Shakespeare’s tragedies, going in I imagined it was going to be hard to find humor in the plot. However, Moore uses the plot, the language, and every situation in the book to fit a joke onto almost every page.

This is Moore’s second re-telling of an old story, his first being Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, which I greatly enjoyed. In this book however, he decided to use an already existing minor character, and develop him greater, instead of making an entirely new character and inserting him into the story. The way Pocket is developed and inserted into the events happening in the narrative, it’s hard at times to imagine him as a minor character in the play.

Going in, I was a little worried that I would have a hard time following the plot since I wasn’t too familiar with the original work, despite being assigned to read it in multiple classes in college (I was never really a motivated student). This was not the case though, as Moore keeps things simple, clearly keeping all characters and titles in order and avoiding traditional Shakespearean dialogue, making it a very approachable book to those not familiar with the bard. Continue reading →