The Book-a-Week Project, Week 10

The Shroud of the Thwacker: A Novel
Chris Elliott

Ah, hell. I'm behind already. I owed this review a week and a half ago. Here's the hurried version:

Funny people can not necessarily write funny. Steve Martin’s The Pleasure of My Company is plenty evidence of that. It’s an unfunny, unpolished novel that wouldn’t have been published were Steve Martin not a celebrity.

The Shroud of the Thwacker is different, because Chris Elliott is a funny, talented writer. He writes as a character similar to the dopey, doughy idiot he played on Get a Life (which, by the way, is one of the best sitcoms ever) who’s researching the odd murders of Jack the Jolly Thwacker that took place in nineteenth-century New York. It contains fat albinos, dwarves, Teddy Roosevelt, and time travel. The extremely ridiculous sense of humor can be overwhelming in large doses, but it’s usually just very, very funny.

Next (but really currently: The Final Solution by Michael Chabon. Mostly because it’s short.