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DiscountDelight - A Dirty Job : A Novel
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List Price: $24.95
Our Price: $14.35
Your Save: $ 10.60 ( 42% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: William Morrow
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
EAN: 9780060590277
ISBN: 0060590270
Label: William Morrow
Manufacturer: William Morrow
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: 2006-03-21
Publisher: William Morrow
Release Date: 2006-03-21
Studio: William Morrow
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Asher to Asher, Dust to Dust
Comment: Mild-mannered Charles Asher, owner of a small resale shop, gets a new job; a job he can't refuse: the local soul collection and redistribution franchise . Asher has become Death. And if he fails to do the job properly, all that is dear to him will be destroyed and the Dark Forces will rise from the Underworld and the very soul of Humanity will be lost. And you thought your job was stressful.
A Dirty Job is darker than Moore's previous works. It begins with Ashe's beloved wife dying during childbirth. Then vile monsters from the Underworld want to suck the brains out of Ashe's new baby. It is, in other words, a delightful comedy. No, really. Despite its grim beginnings, A Dirty Job is a very funny book; it has wonderful characters, and a story line that will truly capture your imagination. I loved it and highly recommend it.
But now I'm really worried. Chris Moore is my favorite author, and there is only one novel of his in print that I haven't read yet, and I fear that once I read that last book all joy will be gone from my world and the Dark Forces will rise from the Underworld, etc., etc. Perhaps you have similar fears? If so, I have a temporary solution.
Try reading Good Omens, a very funny Chris Moore readalike by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, two great writers. I also recommend Neil Gaiman's American Gods. It's not a comic novel, but it is a great read on a similar topic to A Dirty Job. Then you can start in on the 30-odd Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett, some of the funniest books I have ever read. Then,. . . oh, oh,. . . I just realized I only have 17 Terry Pratchett novels left to read...and I'm pretty sure I can smell the faint odor of brimstone...
Customer Rating:
Summary: I'm a Christopher Moore junky
Comment: I tell you how much of a Moore junky I am - although I am just now in England, and thus cannot easily get a hard copy of "Dirty Job," I downloaded the audiobook for this because I just...couldn't...wait. There should be a support group for people like me, people that like to laugh uncontrollably when reading/listening in public, people who appreciate the fine art of wedding a raunchy attitude, a comic genius, a knack for REALLY fun secondary characters, and the End of the Universe As We Know It into a single novel. If you are a fellow junkie, rejoice; Moore is in top form here (I would place it up with "Lamb" and "Bloodsucking Fiends," but everyone in the group is likely to have different favorites). If you are compelled to the audiobook, the actor Fisher Stevens does a dynamite job of reading.
In "Dirty Job," Moore returns to his favorite haunt, San Francisco, with a winsome new hero, Charlie Asher. Following the death of his beloved wife Rachel after the birth of daughter Sophie, Charlie learns he has become a sort of Death Merchant, responsible for retrieving the souls of the recently departed from the material objects they most loved. However, various forces of Darkness would like to get their hands on these things, so Charlie must battle harpies demons and various other devils, while protecting Sophie from their murderous schemes.
That's about all I'm going to say about the plot. Really, I don't think it's possible to summarize a Moore plot in a public place without risk of arrest. I will only say that "Dirty Job" contains all the elements of Moore's unique type of lunacy -
(1) the perfect willingness for Guys to be Guys, sex-obsessed and confounded by women, but fundamentally good guys nevertheless.
(2) the dark and supernatural
(3) the happy realization that sex is both fun and hilarious,
(4) the deadpan secondary characters (the goth store cleck Lilly , along with the ex-cop Ray, the wacky widows who babysit Sophie),
(5) pure silliness (the manual for the Death Merchants has an opening chapter...."So Now You're Death.")
(6) less fortunately, a descent into chaos as the plot attempts to reach some conclusion. In "Dirty Job" this involves the seventh-inning appearance of little 14-inch high creatures made out of animal skulls, big hams, and chicken feet, and dressed in 18th-century costumes.
Moore is not in any sense politically correct, he is adamant about his women being sex objects, about his ethnic characters hewing to stereotype in comic fashion (the Chinese babysitter steals every sort of animal for her stewpot), etc. If that stuff offends you stay WAY the heck away from this.
And get your head examined man. Life is just too short not to laugh this hard.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Death walks with a cane...
Comment: This is first Chris Moore book I've read and I'm glad I've discovered this writer (this is his 9th book, so I've got some catching up to do!). This book reminded me of Anansi Boys by Gaiman, so if you liked one, you'll probably like the other. I say probably, because Moore is a bit loose with the crude language (which is why I gave it 4 instead of 5 stars).
The characters in the book will keep you laughing, and the story will keep you wanting to read more moore.
I saw Moore at a book signing and he's just as funny in person. Go see him on tour if you can.
Customer Rating:
Summary: "Most of us don't live our lives with one, integrated self that meets the world, we're a whole bunch of selves."
Comment: If this sentence sounds different from the Moore you were expecting, it's because this novel is different. Noted for his irreverent and sometimes off-color humor, Christopher Moore has always created his own new worlds--the world of vampires in Bloodsucking Fiends, the spirit world of Native America in Coyote Blue, and the world of singing whales and the researchers who study them in Fluke. In this novel, however, he explores his most serious themes ever, examining the subject of death itself, creating wild and wacky situations while making many thoughtful observations about real life--and death.
Here Charlie Archer, an always timid Beta male, comes face to face with death when, just moments after giving birth to their daughter, his wife suddenly expires. The devastated Charlie soon believes that he is Death personified, a "Death Merchant." Along with others like him, the "Santa's Helpers of Death," Charlie learns that his mission is to retrieve "soul vessels"--those personal objects which contain the souls of the dead who owned them, objects which Death Merchants see as red and glowing.
In the five years that pass during the novel's time line, Charlie meets a typically Moore-like assemblage of unique people--a mailman who collects vintage 1970s pimpwear; the homeless "Emperor of San Francisco" and his dog; and a tall, green-clad black man named Minty Fresh, who sells used CDs. Gradually, Charlie discovers the mysterious other-world of Death--its ferocious "sewer harpies," giant ravens who live under the streets; the Morrigan, three "women" who work with Orcus the Ancient One, who lives in the storm drain; the Luminatus, or Great Death, who keeps the balance between light and darkness; and the Hellhounds, Alvin and Mohammed, who serve the Ruler of the Underworld but who are also his daughter Sophie's gigantic pets. Eventually, Charlie and his Death Merchant friends fight the evil forces of the Underworld in a final climactic battle, filled with the non-stop action and crazy twists that Moore has made his trademark, including a terrific surprise ending, guaranteed to leave a smile on your face.
As Moore examines the subject of death in surprising, imaginative scenes, he highlights death's outrageous ironies, using clever wordplay, puns, and throwaway humor about life. This book contains no "sequined love nuns," no sunglass-clad fruit bats, no porn stars like Kendra, Warrior Babe of the Outland, and no notable profanity or vulgarity. Moore maintains his iconoclastic spirit and his offbeat humor by giving us some new ways to look at death, the ultimate challenge for us all. n Mary Whipple
Customer Rating:
Summary: Death Never Looked So Funny
Comment: Of course this is no Lamb, but stands on its own as another great Christopher Moore book. A Dirty Job is the story of a second hand storeowner, Charlie, who becomes a "death merchant". It is the death merchant's responsibility to read the names that appear in their day planner and get a glowing object from them, by the date designated in their book. They do this to keep the dark underworld from rising up and taking over the earth. Moore's characters are humorous and intriguing. A Diry Job is a combination of the TV show Dead Like Me and The Shining. Like all Moore stories the world of reality and sci-fi are brought together into a ballet of magical words that keeps you reading and wishing there was a hidden chapter at the end.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Charlie Asher is a pretty normal guy. A little hapless, somewhat neurotic, sort of a hypochondriac. He's what's known as a Beta Male: the kind of fellow who makes his way through life by being careful and constant -- you know, the one who's always there to pick up the pieces when the girl gets dumped by the bigger/taller/stronger Alpha Male. But Charlie's been lucky. He owns a building in the heart of San Francisco, and runs a secondhand store with the help of a couple of loyal, if marginally insane, employees. He's married to a bright and pretty woman who actually loves him for his normalcy. And she, Rachel, is about to have their first child. Yes, Charlie's doing okay for a Beta. That is, until the day his daughter, Sophie, is born. Just as Charlie -- exhausted from the birth -- turns to go home, he sees a strange man in mint-green golf wear at Rachel's hospital bedside, a man who claims that no one should be able to see him. But see him Charlie does, and from here on out, things get really weird. . . . People start dropping dead around him, giant ravens perch on his building, and it seems that everywhere he goes, a dark presence whispers to him from under the streets. Strange names start appearing on his nightstand notepad, and before he knows it, those people end up dead, too. Yup, it seems that Charlie Asher has been recruited for a new job, an unpleasant but utterly necessary one: Death. It's a dirty job. But hey, somebody's gotta do it. Christopher Moore, the man whose Lamb served up Jesus' "missing years" (with the funny parts left in), and whose Fluke found the deep humor in whale researchers' lives, now shines his comic light on the undiscovered country we all eventually explore -- death and dying -- and the results are hilarious, heartwarming, and a hell of a lot of fun.
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