Wednesday, November 30, 2011

There Is No Dog by Meg Rosoff

There Is No DogAt first, I found this book hilarious and was spending more time laughing than reading. Let's pretend that God is really a teenage boy who's really horny and every time he falls in love with a chick, a mortal chick, the earth is destroyed by crazy weather. Every time he forgets to turn off the water in his bathtub, the earth is flooded. And this is a very lazy, self-centered, God named Bob whose mother won the planet earth in a galaxy poker game. The author gets a star for uniqueness alone. LOL

Bob is yet in love with another mortal girl, Lucy. But it can't work because Lucy is going to age, wither, and rot and Bob is going to stay Bob. There's also Mr. B who does all the work and wishes to resign, Estelle (I have nothing much to say about her. Her character didn't have a lot of impact, really.) Bob's mom... and this was just too weird. I'll get to that.


The book reminds me of an Adam Sandler movie. It's stupid. It's so stupid, it's funny. 


--Bob screws up his face and farts. (Remember, Bob is God.)


--And Bob said, "Let the earth bring forth grass and the fruit tree," and it did, and Mr. B had to admit that many of the fruits were inventive and delicious, with one or two exceptions-pomegranates, which seemed to be all form and no function, and lemons, which caused his mouth to purse up like a duck's anus...


There's more. There are some absolutely hilarious moments, but they were mostly in the beginning. As the book continued, I discovered I was no longer laughing. The jokes stopped. Bob just became stupid and petulant. The plot.. wasn't going anywhere, really. By the end, had it not been for the laughs, I realized there was no point to reading this book. And Bob's mom.. a prime example of weirdness that was too much.. she runs around wearing nothing but a few postage stamps? Are these little people?


I appreciate the good idea, however, and also like the entire joke of God being a teenage boy and yet the entire world is brainwashed into think he's something wonderful simply because he created man in his own image and instilled in them the desire to worship him. Ha ha ha.


Three stars and this is an ARC I got through Shelf Awareness. Thus, the quotes may not be exact. 


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