Norm's Reviews > Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d'Art

When I went to his signing at Anderson's Books, Moore took one look at my orange University of Illinois T-shirt and said, "nobody looks good in orange."

So you could see that after three years of writing Sacre Bleu, he was still fixated on colors, though completely wrong about how great I look in orange.

That said, Sacre Blue took off at a plodding pace, with minimal comedic moments, but the history was nothing short of fascinating, so he captured my interest in the first chapter with the murder of one of my favorite painters, Vincent Van Gogh.

Cool!

And the book was in all blue font!

Awesome.

And he introduced the characters by showing paintings of them by other famous painters.

Fantastic!

And there were all manner of nude paintings.

Genius!

But the plot itself unraveled with the speed of a sloth slogging through mud, and had I rated the book based on its first half, it would not have gotten four stars, despite all of the points above.

Halfway through, things changed. The comedy picked up, mostly in the dialogue of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. Lautrec was by far the most compelling and fun character in the novel, and the one who brought out the Christopher Moore of this book.

And like with a Dan Brown novel, I found myself Googling images, The Garden of Earthly Delights, the caves of L'Albi, the Bonfire of the Vanities. In other words, Moore made me want to see what he was describing. I was sucked in, and when that happens, you have to like the book.

Which I did.

Not your normal Christopher Moore, but a compelling read where you will take something from it and maybe gain an appreciation for the finest art ever.

And my copy is signed. It's okay to be jealous.