Book Review: Fluke by Christopher Moore
This is great fun and a quick read. It is truly bizarre and isn’t the sort of book I would’ve picked up on my own. Brenda said I might enjoy it and its zaniness, and frankly, she knows me better than I know myself. I won’t spoil the plot, because the book blindsides you so hilariously. The basic idea is that a middle-aged divorced whale researcher is in Hawaii studying what he always does: whale songs. One of them appears to send him a strange message (“Bite Me!”) on its fluke, which is the big tail fin. Anyway, it’s all hilarious fun. Moore characterizes the aging eccentric scientist wonderfully and in a way that academics would appreciate. Overall, imagine if Jimmy Buffett wrote a book about scientists in the field – that’s pretty much Fluke. (It turns out that Jimmy Buffett has actually written a few books, but I haven’t read them and maybe they’re nothing like this, so don’t take that comparison too seriously.)