Book Review - Sacre Bleu

Sacre Bleu's Amazon Listing

Christopher Moore's Website

The Cover:

Wow!  Isn't that cover just awesomeness?

You know how they say book covers boost sales, by inspiring readers to pick up a lonely book on a shelf and give the summary a look-see?  Well, Sacre Bleu was definitely one of those books for me.  Having a background in Art & Illustration, I couldn’t help but be attracted to the wonderful cover of Sacre Bleu.  I’ve never read anything by Christopher Moore, which could be good or it could be bad.  But with a wonderful cover like the one above, what can possibly go wrong?

 

Story:

It’s 1890 and Vincent van Gogh at the height of his career drew a pistol (no pun intended) and shot himself in the chest.  Then proceeded to walk through a cornfield to a doctor, only for it to be too late and him die.  Did he really commit suicide or was there something else behind these tragic and usual events?

 

My thoughts:

Well Vincent’s friends, one Henry Lautrec and a baker/painter/protagonist named Lucien Lessard are on the case.  At least that’s what the inside cover of the book says.  So we have a story involving the famous Vincent van Gogh, art in general, a murder mystery and a baker who’s looking to solve it all.  This book sounds like its right up my alley.

 

The death of Vincent happens in the first chapter and then gets briefly mentioned again in an afterthought about 2/3 through the book.  It seems the actual mystery and solving of a murder was just to get readers to pick this novel up.  What the book really is about is a young man’s love of his muse.  Or if you keep reading, it turns out the story is one big metaphor about how much Christopher Moore loves artists, their muses and just art in general. 

 

The first couple of chapters introduce you to Lucien, his family and his dear friend Henri (who spends way too much time drinking and hanging with whores).  I was really getting into Lucien’s love of painting and his awesome friends, like Renoir, Monet or Manet, and also really enjoying the relationship of Lucien and his father.  Then the first flashback happened.  It wouldn’t be so bad, if it stayed revolved around Lucien and his story, but then it crept into a history lesson about how Paris was in bad shape during a war.  And then flashback, after flashback, after flashback.

 

From there the book spiraled out of control and jumped all over the place, sometimes not including Lucien at all.  Instead you get art lessons from the Impressionists or stories told through their eyes, and Vincent and Lucien’s story is thrown to the waste side.  What really kept me going is the fact that I have an Art background, so I could relate to all the side stories being told here.  But there’s also a disadvantage to that: I already know most of the history and really had to drudge through it, just so I could get back to Lucien’s story.

 

By the time you do get back to Lucien and his bud, Henri, you’ve lost the bond with him and don’t really care what happens next.  Or at least that’s how I felt.  I finished the book because I wanted to write this review and was really hoping there was something that would happen at the end to justify all the history I read through, but I was disappointed.

 

Christopher Moore’s prose is top notch and his comedy, when it did show up, was refreshing and had me giggling here and there.  But as I see with the rest of his books, it’s his comedy that he’s known for, and this novel just didn’t have enough to keep me reading.

 

I do applaud all the research he did into the lives of such famous artists at that time, but I think the plot got away from him.  If he removed 1/3 of the book and shortened the history lessons, reverting back to Lucien more, I think this would have been a better book.  But really, what do I know?  I just know what I like to read, not how to write a best-seller.

 

In the end, Sacre Bleu has a great idea behind, with wonderful—but not enough—comedy, but Moore let his love of art history get in the way of his story telling.  He even goes so far as to tell you in the last chapter, exactly what was real and what wasn’t.  The sad thing is: most of it was non-fiction—and most of the time real life is boring. 

 

If you’re in love with the writing of Moore or just love Art History, then you might want to pick this book up.  The rest of us should check it out of our local library and see if it’s to our liking.

 

2 1/2 out of 5 stars (1 star both for comedy & research and 1/2 star for the idea)