“Warning: This is a bawdy tale. Herein you will find gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity, as well as non-traditional grammar, split infinitives, and the odd wank. If that sort of thing bothers you, then gentle reader pass by, for we endeavor only to entertain, not to offend. That said, if that’s the sort of thing you think you might enjoy, then you have happened upon the perfect story!”
Fool by Christopher Moore is King Lear from the Fool’s point of view. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but readers should heed the warning above that the book opens with. It is a true homage to Shakespeare—full of blood and guts and betrayal and horrible people.
The title character, named Pocket, is sometimes horrible and almost always deceitful. But two things redeemed him: he was always concerned for his apprentice, a “natural” (someone born with some physical or mental incapacity); and the people he was manipulating were, without a doubt, far more evil than he.
I haven’t read King Lear in about ten years, and I think if it had been fresher in my mind when I read Fool, I would have enjoyed it just a tiny bit more. But I think anyone who is semi-familiar with Shakespeare can appreciate this book. It was terribly funny—even the footnotes were funny. But also tragic and ghastly.
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