A Dirty Job - Christopher Moore

416 pages
The Quill Book Award for General Fiction (2006)

Charlie Asher is a pretty normal guy with a normal life, married to a bright and pretty woman who actually loves him for his normalcy. They're even about to have their first child. Yes, Charlie's doing okay—until people start dropping dead around him, and everywhere he goes a dark presence whispers to him from under the streets. Charlie Asher, it seems, has been recruited for a new position: as Death.
It's a dirty job. But, hey! Somebody's gotta do it

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was some book. Filled with humor at every other line and at the same time addressing loss, heartache and moving on.
This book was a real joy to read - quirky humor that kept my laughing almost all throughout.

Charlie is a beta male extremely devoted to his wife. In her hospital room after delivering their baby, Charlie sees a man in a green mint suit who shouldn’t have been seen by anybody. And that’s when Charlie's life changes. His wife has died, he has a new baby daughter he doesn’t know how to care for, and now people are dying around him - all too much for a Beta male's imagination to handle. But then, Beta males are conditioned to endure and make it -
"The Beta Male gene has survived not by meeting and overcoming adversity, but by anticipating and avoiding it"

Moore creates an interesting concept on the soul. Put simply - you aren't born with one but you get one when you're ready for it. Charlie is now a Death Merchant - someone who collects souls from the dying (the soul vessels are material objects that the dying person was senti about. Materialism and the soul - talk about irony) and passes them on those who don’t have souls yet. He needs to collect the souls before the Gods of the underworld get their hands on them and feed off them to grow stronger and eventually bring darkness on us all.

Read this book - in its happy pages it brings up a lot of thinking material (hospice nurses taking care of the dying, the feeling of loss and pain when you lose a spouse, the concept of death and a whole lot more)

Some of the lines:

Charlie: “A speech disorder! A speech disorder! A cute lisp is a speech disorder. My daughter kills people with the word kitty. I had to keep my hand over her mouth all the way home. There’s probably video somewhere. People thought I was one of those people who beats their kid in department stores.”
Minty Fresh: “Don’t be ridiculous, Charlie, people love the parents who beat their kids in department stores. It’s the ones who just let their kids wreak havoc that everybody hates.”

Charlie: "I don’t think she’s seeing anybody, but since the world is about to be taken over by the Forces of Darkness, you may not have time for dating

And my favourite: Can a conscience be greedy?