Picked this up from Bent Books especially for Crimson-Tide as her Secret Santa book.

Hope you enjoy.

Fantastic! A book from my wish list, along with lots of other little surprises.
Although My TBR pile is embarassingly large, this one is NOT going on the bottom, so hopefully I'll be back here to report in the not too distant future.
Thanks MadamMuck.

So much for my good intentions! *lol*
Anyway, it is now "almost" at the very top of the mountain; and reserved for catsalive as part of the "Make Me Read It - Australia Only" relay.

A very clever, lighthearted and mostly humourous look at what might have happened during all those blank years that none of the four gospels talk about; the years between Christ's birth and the beginning of his ministry. And who better to tell the story than his closest friend and constant companion since the age of six; supervised by one very stupid and amusing angel. So why wasn't Biff's story included amongst the original gospels? You'll need to read it to find the answer to that one I'm afraid!

This is the second Christopher Moore book I've read, and it is pretty subdued and "straight" compared to the other one (The Stupidest Angel) - much less 'over the top'. The beginning was interesting in terms of the lives lead by the Jews under Roman rule. I didn't enjoy the centre section all that much though; ie the parts where Biff and Joshua are in China and India (especially India), and is the reason I couldn't give the book 9 stars.

However the last section with Joshua, Biff, Maggie and the others roaming about the country preaching etc is really fascinating. A very human and compassionate alternative to the somewhat dry versions found in the New Testament. The warmth and depth of the friendship and love between the three is very touchingly portrayed. And the end . . . well, that's the best bit. Not just the end end, but also the bit before that.

Moore says in his Afterword while discussing one method of being able to distinguish between the real and made-up biblical references: "The problem arises, however, that if the reader knows the Bible well enough to recognize the real references, there's a good chance that he or she has decided not to read this book." I'm not so sure about that, and if what he says is true then it's a shame. There are many very funny subtle and not so subtle references that my Biblical education from decades ago recognized, and it would be a shame for them to go wafting over other readers' heads.

Yes, some of the humour is a bit too slapstick and schoolboyish, but then that's just Christopher Moore. Mostly the book is an intelligent attempt to add more "story" to the one that is so well known. He doesn't pretend any of it is true, and it's certainly not meant to be blasphemous. It fills in a few gaps, it's satirical and it's fun. It's also a moving and sympathetic view of the incidents and the people involved. The major characters are drawn very tenderly in my opinion; and overall the word compassionate keeps popping into my head.


Once again thanks for this one MadamMuck, and sorry it took me so long to read it. Very shortly off to catsalive.

Thanks crimson-tide. I nearly started 'Stupidest Angel' the other day when a bookring arrived.

I really enjoyed this, even though I didn't want to. The story was so good that I had to keep on reading to the end. Biff was such a boy that it did take on an atmosphere of boys'-own adventure story on occasion, but it was all part of the enjoyable ride. After all, presumably Joshua did have a life before he got to his 30s, & he would have had childhood friends, so why not Biff? I say nothing about the older, underlying story, because to me it's just that - a story. I thought it may interfere with my enjoyment of this tale, but it didn't.

I agree with crimson-tide, not quite as over the top as some of his novels, but a well-written, amusing interlude indeed.

Sent to yorkshire-lass for the Wish List Tag Game - Parallel. Enjoy!

Thank you for tagging me with this, I'm looking forward to reading it. As my TBR pile is massive it may take me a while to get to it.

Got to it at last!
I enjoyed this but not as much as I've enjoyed all the other books I've read by this author. There were some LOL moments, it was very well written and engaging, I really liked Biff and Maggie. I'll never look at bible stories in the same way again!

This is now on its way to Cross-patch as part of the European Wishlist Tag Game, hope you enjoy it as much as I did :-)

Thank you. Let the fun begin.