Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
I read somewhere that all of Christopher Moore’s books had been purchased as film rights but none yet had been made into a movie. Sacre Bleu may be the first. Resplendent with Moore’s characteristic wit and humor, Sacre Bleu shines with a new maturity and virtuoso swagger of talent. I think Moore has turned a corner in his work, beginning with Fool published in 2009. No doubt about it, Moore’s collection of San Francisco / Pine Cove / Hawaii / west coast recurring character series is fun, I’m ce...
There are those who love Christopher Moore for his bizarre, irreverent wit. And there are those who love him for his ability to create portals into absurd realities, and his ability to make those absurd realities seem almost plausible. For the first group - this book is not for you. For the second set - you're gonna love it.Moore really did his homework, when researching for this novel. My mother has a degree in Art History, and believe me, I've seen some things about all my favorite painters! (...
There are those who love Christopher Moore for his bizarre, irreverent and slicing wit. There are those who love him for his ability to create portals into absurd realities, and his ability to make those absurd realities seem almost plausible. For the first group - this book is not for you. For the second set - you're gonna love it.There are slices of Moore's strange humor throughout, but this book leans more heavily towards a fusion of fantasy, historical fiction and satire. The tale begins wit...
Sacre Bleu: A Comedy d'Art is heavy on the blue and the art, but light on the comedy. The book is set in the art scene of 19th century Paris, a fascinating time for the art world. Every artist of this era makes an appearance in Sacre Bleu, Mr. Moore did a ton of impressive research for this book. The book begins with the end of Vincent Van Gogh’s troubled life, an apparent suicide by gunshot. But somehow Vincent gets himself to his doctor before his death for treatment, where he raves about the
Y'know, I could give a damn about painting. Van Gogh, Manet, Monet. I'm dimly aware of them, I know they're somehow culturally important, but I'm just not interested. It's not my cup of tea. Similarly, I *really* don't give a damn about the lives of said painters in Paris in the 1800s. Just don't care. It says a lot about Christopher Moore that he can write a book centering around these things, and with a slight splash of the fantastic make a story that holds my interest, engages my curiosity, a...
Ever wonder why all those 19th century European painters were so batshit crazy? According to Christopher Moore it wasn’t just the absinthe, lead poisoning and/or syphilis.Lucien Lessard is a talented painter who also makes a mean loaf of bread in his family’s bakery. One of Lucien’s best friends is another artist named Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec who doesn’t let his short stature stop him from drinking constantly while trying to sleep with every whore in Paris. Lucien and Henri are saddened by the...
Let me get this out in the open first, I love Moore. I think he is hilarious and, at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, ahead of his time. It is for these same reasons that I love the Impressionists. However, the coupling of these two together does not seem to work.In this novel, Moore attempts to understand why van Gogh would attempt to kill himself and then walk a distance to seek a doctor. In order to get to the bottom of this, detectives Lucien Lessard Henri Toulouse-Lautrec take on the case.
"Why are you lying on the floor?""Solidarity. And we ran out of cognac. This is my preferred out of cognac posture." Ooh la la! Yes, this is absolutely an art history wankfest. Some of it, actually a good deal of it is startlingly true and there are some liberties taken for the story's sake, but I have to say that all the little toss away lines, the references for Michelangelo, cave paintings in France to Artemisia Gentileschi evidence a great deal of thought and research. The elements work w
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 o...
"Sacre Bleu" is the best Tom Robbins novel since "Half-Asleep in Frog Pajamas." Of course, it was written by Christopher Moore, not Mr. Robbins.If you are looking for a typical Moore laughfest like "You Suck" or "Fool", you might be disappointed. I was pleasantly surprised. "Sacre Bleu" is beautifully, carefully, and intelligently written. It's set in the late 19th Century, and follows some very real people (the Van Gogh Brothers, Monet, Manet) as they paint and live. The main characters are Luc...
Theoretically I should have fallen in love with this book. I love art. I love books. I really love 19th century French painters, I kill that category on Jeopardy. I also love Christopher Moore. So yes, this book should have got me straight through the heart. Okay, the book was well researched. Yes Toulouse-Lautrec really was a womanizing, alcoholic dwarf, yes there really is a lot of mystery concerning Van Gogh's apparent suicide, and yes Gauguin did really have a thing for young Tahitian girls....
Fans of Christopher Moore may be shocked by this book. Exclamations of “Sacré bleu!” followed by monocles popping out from eyes and spilled cups of tea are probably going to be the norm. For, you see, I enjoyed this book thoroughly. It was an excellent supernatural mystery set in Paris and involving great artists and their muses. But it is not very funny, or at least, it doesn’t have the same, non-stop humorous dialogue and description that I have come to expect from Moore.I’m not sure I can do