Shakespeare for Squirrels: A Novel
Shakespeare for Squirrels: A Novel book cover

Shakespeare for Squirrels: A Novel

Hardcover – May 12, 2020

Price
$14.24
Format
Hardcover
Pages
288
Publisher
William Morrow
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-0062434029
Dimensions
6 x 0.97 x 9 inches
Weight
15.4 ounces

Description

"It takes a certain amount of guts and wild abandon to recast a Shakespeare comedy as a hard-boiled detective story, but if anyone can pull it off, it’s master satirist Moore, whose gift for funny business apparently knows no bounds. . . .xa0A welcome return of a fan-favorite character in a romp of a tale that will delight not only mystery buffs but also fantasy fanatics, and, of course, Bard lovers." — Booklist (starred review) "Moore’s trademark humor is on full display with his cast of strangely lovable characters. This is Shakespeare with an edge and will not only appeal to Moore’s fans but garner new ones." — Library Journal (starred review) "Nobody writes mystery novels quite like Christopher Moore . . . . Asxa0hilarious as A Midsummer Night’s Dream is to begin with, Moore adds a contemporary dose of sly humor that I think would impress the Bard." — Bookpage (starred review) “Buckle in for Shakespeare for Squirrels , an uproarious take on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream—transformed into a murder mystery. . . A funny, fast-paced, and wild read.” — Huffington Post "Christopher Moore has written a wonderful diversion for hard times. Even Shakespeare would have appreciated the jokes." — Wall Street Journal "Axa0hilariously noir tale of love, magic and murder." — USA Today “Manic parodist Moore…returns with a rare gift for Shakespeare fans who think A Midsummer Night’s Dream would be perfect if only it were a little more madcap. . . . A kicky, kinky, wildly inventive 21st century mashup with franker language and a higher body count than Hamlet.” — Kirkus Reviews “This cheeky homage will please lovers of Shakespeare and camp.” — Publishers Weekly Christopher Moore is the author of seventeen previous novels, including Shakespeare for Squirrels , Noir , Secondhand Souls, Sacré Bleu, Fool, and Lamb . He lives in San Francisco, California.

Features & Highlights

  • New York Times
  • Bestseller!
  • Shakespeare meets Dashiell Hammett in this wildly entertaining murder mystery from
  • New York Times
  • bestselling author Christopher Moore—an uproarious, hardboiled take on the Bard’s most performed play,
  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  • , featuring Pocket, the hero of
  • Fool
  • and
  • The Serpent of Venice
  • , along with his sidekick, Drool, and pet monkey, Jeff.
  • Set adrift by his pirate crew, Pocket of Dog Snogging—last seen in
  • The Serpent of Venice
  • —washes up on the sun-bleached shores of Greece, where he hopes to dazzle the Duke with his comedic brilliance and become his trusted fool.
  • But the island is in turmoil. Egeus, the Duke’s minister, is furious that his daughter Hermia is determined to marry Demetrius, instead of Lysander, the man he has chosen for her. The Duke decrees that if, by the time of the wedding, Hermia still refuses to marry Lysander, she shall be executed . . . or consigned to a nunnery. Pocket, being Pocket, cannot help but point out that this decree is complete bollocks, and that the Duke is an egregious weasel for having even suggested it. Irritated by the fool’s impudence, the Duke orders his death. With the Duke’s guards in pursuit, Pocket makes a daring escape.
  • He soon stumbles into the wooded realm of the fairy king Oberon, who, as luck would have it, IS short a fool. His jester Robin Goodfellow—the mischievous sprite better known as Puck—was found dead. Murdered. Oberon makes Pocket an offer he can’t refuse: he will make Pocket his fool and have his death sentence lifted if Pocket finds out who killed Robin Goodfellow. But as anyone who is even vaguely aware of the Bard’s most performed play ever will know, nearly every character has a motive for wanting the mischievous sprite dead.
  • With too many suspects and too little time, Pocket must work his own kind of magic to find the truth, save his neck, and ensure that all ends well.
  • A rollicking tale of love, magic, madness, and murder,
  • Shakespeare for Squirrels
  • is a Midsummer Night’s noir—a wicked and brilliantly funny good time conjured by the singular imagination of Christopher Moore.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
60%
(1.5K)
★★★★
25%
(627)
★★★
15%
(376)
★★
7%
(176)
-7%
(-176)

Most Helpful Reviews

✓ Verified Purchase

What a blast

This is pure Moore, hysterics from the get go, and amazingly enough I now know the story of a Midsummer Night's Dream so it's probably, unintentionally, educational to boot!
Pocket of Dog Snogging upon Ouze, jester to the late King Lear, with drool his dimwitted apprentice, his enchanted puppet Jones, and his pet monkey Jeff, washes ashore in Shakespeare’s Athens, where he meets the fairy, Cobweb, and teams up with Nick Bottom and his team of ' mechanicals' a troupe pf players rehearsing Pyramus and Thisby, to find the killer of Robin Goodfellow (Puck), jester to shadow king Oberon. You'll meet fairies, Goblins, Amazons and even the sex-crazed Fairy Queen Titania
I seriously didn't want it to end. Maybe Chris Moore can tackle War and Peace next?
7 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

I am enamoured of an ass!

And what a magnificent, hilarious ass he is! Chris Moore never, ever disappoints! This is the third go 'round for Pocket the Fool and his lumbering idiot apprentice, Drool (first met in "Fool", the very funny rethink of "King Lear" - which I've read three times). Warning: If you're not familiar with the Shakespeare plays he's sending up, get thee to a library (or at least watch a video version). I introduced "Fool" to my book club (I know - groan), and no one had read Lear or seen it performed. They still liked the book, but didn't get a lot of the jokes. If you're going to read "Shakespeare for Squirrels", you had better know "Midsummer Night's Dream". Oh, and isn't it quite funny that author Christopher Moore sounds a lot like Christopher Marlowe?
2 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Not his best effort

I have almost all of Christopher Moore's previous books and liked almost all of them. I believe "Practical Demonkeeping" was the best of his early efforts. This book was okay as a Shakespeare pastiche, but I would not deem it a good story. The story line is strained and some of the characters are downright imbecilic and give little to the story. If you want a good story, read the earlier books as they are wickedly funny and have a story line that can be followed.
2 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Crazy but memorable ride

This is one of the wackiest books I've ever read. The author undermines and mocks the reader's every assumption. Though he's not always funny and sometimes it's hard to follow the thread of the story, he dishes out one delightful surprise after another. It's a crazy but memorable ride.
2 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Christopher Moore is hilarious. Always happy when he puts out another novel

Loved the story and characters
1 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Another great one in the series

Moore is one of my favorite authors. I first read his "Serpent of Venice" and was immediately hooked. I have read everything he has written. "Shakespeare for Squirrels" is yet another masterpiece. I like his characters, his pacing and the abundant humor in his works. If you haven't read any of his works, start with this one and then make space on your bookshelf for the rest of is output.
1 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Book

Fun book, I enjoyed reading it
1 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Not up to Moore's usual standards

I've read many books by Christopher Moore including the two previous " Fool" books . The previous installments were laugh out loud funny , this one , not so much . To me , it read like a first draft that should have been revised several times and honed into a finished product . Sorry Mr. Moore but this one was , at best , blah .
1 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Shakespeare for We Who Are Squirrely About Shakespeare

Pocket, meet Puck. Puck, meet Pocket.

We first met Christopher Moore's court jester Pocket of Dog-Snogging in Fool, the first of what is now three entries in his series of Shakespeare send-ups. Known only as The Fool in the original King Lear, the only person Lear allows to criticize him, Pocket is the ideal character to recast as the protagonist of the story, allowing us to see it retold from his point of view.

And it's sheer genius. Inspired. Especially in the use of language -- a mix of Shakespearean and modern English, more than slightly sprinkled with epithets, replete with snark and sarcasm, laugh out loud funny, which is no mean feat with a tragedy like Lear.

Next, in The Serpent of Venice, Moore sent Pocket to Venice to deal with the Shakespeare plays set there, The Merchant of Venice and Othello, and added a dragon to boot. Excellent stuff -- since Fool was the second Moore title I read, and nothing else quite lived up to it in my mind except for his biblical satire Lamb, I was quite happy to find that TMoV was every bit as good as Fool.

Now, Pocket is back, Moore uniting him with the jester he was named after, Puck, in a re-imagining of A Midsummer's Night Dream. This time around, Pocket has to solve Puck's murder in order to free his pal (er, apprentice) Drool and help Bottom change back from an ass to a man. That he also beds the promiscuous fairy Cobweb, who by day lives her life as a squirrel, is a singular indication of how freely Moore is adapting the Bard.

As someone who never really cared for Shakespeare but always enjoyed updates, send-ups, and other variations on his plays, the Pocket series has ranked among my all-time favorites, both within Moore's canon and in all of my reading. I especially enjoy "reading" him in audio -- I read an ARC of this book kindly provided by NetGalley, but I will be listening to the audio version at some point, having read both previous Pocket books in both formats.

Shakespeare for Squirrels is not quite up to the standard of Fool and The Serpent of Venice, but that just means it's 4.8 stars rather than 5. I guess the one thing that gives me pause is making a comedy based on a comedy rather than tragedy, but on the other hand, it is Shakespeare's most widely performed play, and SfS is delightful, funny, and also an easy quick read, even if you're not all that familiar with the source material.

One need not have read the previous entries to enjoy this as a standalone book. If you have, rest assured that everyone is back -- Drool of course, as well as Jeff the Monkey and the Puppet Jones, the latter especially funny early on when Pocket believes he is speaking for himself, and then later when Pocket realizes that the denizens of the forest don't recognize ventriloquism and believe that the puppet stick is really speaking for himself.

I would have liked to have spiced up my review with some of the clever phraseology that has carried through all three of these books, but most of it is quite profane, and I do fancy a frolic, so I'll refrain. C'est la vie, I say (in perfect effing French).
1 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Funny!

Love this author