The Gospel According to Biff

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore (3.5 Stars)

Moore has one of the sharpest, steadiest wits I’ve read. I laughed out loud more in this book than I have in a very long time, probably since Sedaris’ Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. Moore’s sarcasm is potent, which makes sense – apparently his character Biff invented sarcasm.

However, at times the book drug on for me. The last 80 pages felt a bit like he was just trying to rush to finish, and I was okay with that – I kinda wanted to be done.

This may be the most irreverent book I’ve read, and if you are a person of Christian faith and don’t have space for laughing at ourselves or just wondering what an alternate story might be like (or are uneasy with some seedy scenes), then you should steer clear. But if you want to read a humor writer who will actually make you laugh – and consistently – then you can’t go wrong.

On the faith note, one more thought – Moore intuitively gets it, that Jesus was a person of compassion and justice who would subvert every sort of earthly power. We all seem to know that Jesus was a revolutionary.