In Christopher Moore's ingenious debut novel, we meet one of the most memorably mismatched pairs in the annals of literature. The good-looking one is one-hundred-year-old ex-seminarian and "roads" scholar Travis O'Hearn. The green one is Catch, a demon with a nasty habit of eating most of the people he meets. Behind the fake Tudor façade of Pine Cove, California, Catch sees a four-star buffet. Travis, on the other hand, thinks he sees a way of ridding himself of his toothy traveling companion. The winos, neo-pagans, and deadbeat Lotharios of Pine Cove, meanwhile, have other ideas. And none of them is quite prepared when all hell breaks loose.
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Christopher Moore is the author of eighteen previous novels, including Razzmatazz, Shakespeare for Squirrels, Noir, Secondhand Souls, Sacré Bleu, Fool, and Lamb. He lives in San Francisco, California.
In Christopher Moore's ingenious debut novel, we meet one of the most memorably mismatched pairs in the annals of literature. The good-looking one is one-hundred-year-old ex-seminarian and "roads" scholar Travis O'Hearn. The green one is Catch, a demon with a nasty habit of eating most of the people he meets. Behind the fake Tudor façade of Pine Cove, California, Catch sees a four-star buffet. Travis, on the other hand, thinks he sees a way of ridding himself of his toothy traveling companion. The winos, neo-pagans, and deadbeat Lotharios of Pine Cove, meanwhile, have other ideas. And none of them is quite prepared when all hell breaks loose.
PRACTICAL DEMONKEEPING is joyously absurd, managing as it does to build a story of real warmth around a flesh-eating demon. Travis, the reluctant master of the demon, Catch, has been on the road 70 years in his quest to banish Catch back to the netherworld. Here Travis arrives at the quiet town of Pine Cove, with its fake Tudor façade, and the story takes off from there. Oliver Wyman handles the numerous characters with ease and considerable talent for mimicry as the Californian misfits are joined by an Arabian djinn, the fruity English-accented HP, and, of course, the demon himself, voiced with larynx-lacerating menace and mischief. Yes, people do get eaten, but for most of the unlikely heroes and heroines there's a happy ending. C.A.T. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
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