Fool Moore, Christo­pher
William Mor­row 2009World­Cat • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

Fool is Christo­pher Moore’s retelling of King Lear, told from the per­spec­tive of — who else — Lear’s court jester. The jester, who Moore names Pocket, may be a fool by trade, but he is cer­tainly no dunce. He has free run of the cas­tle, friends in both high and low places, and with Lear’s pro­tec­tion is free to make fun of who­ever he wants. He is also very close to Lear’s daugh­ters Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia. Pocket is most loyal to Lear and Cordelia, and through­out Moore’s take on the tale, it is his behind-the-scenes schem­ing that serves to pro­tect their inter­ests and lives.

Fool opens with a tongue-in-cheek warn­ing from Moore that “This is a bawdy tale. Herein you will find gra­tu­itous shag­ging, mur­der, spank­ing, maim­ing, trea­son, and hereto­fore unex­plored heights of vul­gar­ity and pro­fan­ity…” In other words, Shake­speare prob­a­bly would’ve loved it. Moore acknowl­edges that tak­ing on one of the most famous plays by the best known Eng­lish writer of all time was a daunt­ing task. But, then again, this is from the same man who wrote a novel about the lost years in the life of Jesus (and his best friend Biff). He retains basi­cally all of Lear’s com­plex plot, although he of course makes Pocket and his machi­na­tions more inte­gral to that plot. The end­ing is dif­fer­ent, though — you can’t have a comic novel with a truly tragic fin­ish. Moore also brings in dia­log and char­ac­ters from other of the Bard’s plays, most notably the trio of witches from Mac­beth.

I’ve read all of Christo­pher Moore’s nov­els, and I think that Fool is one of his best. I read most of the book dur­ing a stint in a pit orches­tra (coin­ci­den­tally for a pro­duc­tion of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Yeomen of the Guard, which also fea­tures a jester), and I had to be very care­ful not to laugh out loud at inop­por­tune moments. A famil­iar­ity with King Lear is help­ful but by no means a require­ment for read­ing Fool; read­ing the syn­op­sis on Wikipedia is prob­a­bly suf­fi­cient prepa­ra­tion. I can’t rec­om­mend Moore’s writ­ing highly enough, for those read­ers who enjoy a twisted sense of humor. Start with Fool, Lamb, or Blood­suck­ing Fiends: A Love Story, then check out some of his other novels.