Moore is regularly a bright, funny, poignant writer who fine tunes his books the way a great chef would a recipe, removing all excess ingredients and giving us just enough of each of the primary flavors that our senses are delighted and intrigued. This time, it he took whatever was in his fridge that wasn’t quite rotten but not still fresh, poured it into a casserole dish, set the oven to 450, and prayed. Then when it didn’t come out right, he slathered it in cheese, added some 150 proof rum, and lit the top on fire. And as such, I will politely decline the offer of seconds, thank you.
REVIEWER’S NOTE: “A Dirty Job” was published in 2006. A lot has changed in our society since then, some for the better, some for the worse. But even with that societal shift, there are things in this book which, by 2006 standards, were already outdated modes of thinking. Also, I have read some of Moore’s other works, some of which I enjoyed immensely. Please see Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal and Fool.
Here are the ways in which “A Dirty Job” no longer fits with our current world:
Every character who is black is described in this fashion: He was tall, thin, and black. He wore green the shade of mint, and was very black (no joke, he uses “very black”.) No descriptions of white people consist of, he was short, fat, and white. She was skinny, perky, and white.
The one black character who is given more than a single scene is reduced to a stereotype sidekick who is never as calm and collected, and resorts more easily to violence, than the white hero. His name is Minty Fresh.
Not a single black woman to be found.
The main character’s sister is described as appearing “… not so much androgynous as confused.” This insensitivity is carried throughout the book with the main character making comments about how his sister looks like David Bowie, clearly using it as an insult.
The term f*ck puppets is created within this book, referring to women who use their attractive appearance to find wealthy men. It’s a derogatory chauvinist term that’s sprinkled around like bits of insecure sea salt throughout.
A character from Russia refers to everything as “like bear”, while the one Chinese woman cooks everything she can and sees every animal for how much she can get selling their parts. The one Chinese man owns and runs a dry cleaners and sells illegal fireworks from the backroom. These are stereotypical tropes and these characters do not exist outside of them.
One character’s Jewish heritage is boiled down to a running gag about the similarity between the words Shiksa and Shih Tzu.
When Lily is introduced, she’s a young high-schooler. Several years later (after she’s legal, of course) she offers herself sexually to the protagonist (who only turns her down because she’s like his “little sister”) and has sex with a middle aged man she’s been working with since far before she was legal. Gross.
When the main character spends any decent amount of time with Minty Fresh, he immediately starts talking “ghetto”. He is told to stop. He tries again. And again.
The first time the main character and Minty Fresh meet, the main character tries to kill him. Minty gets a little upset verbally, and the main character’s response? “Oh, sure, go black on me. Play the ethnic card.”
A character is literally introduced within the last four chapters, spends one of those chapters giving a long exposition about who she is and why she’s important, shags the main character after knowing him for all of a few hours, and serves no other purpose than to move the lumbering, pointless story along and act as a sexual outlet for our poor, frustrated male protagonist.
And all of this sexism, homophobia, racism, and misogyny is excused though the author’s simple use of a two word phrase: Beta Male. Because the main character is a Beta Male, he can make all of these social faux pas and they’re seen as… cute. Innocent. Naive. He’s the ultimate example of privilege. Don’t understand black culture? Beta Male! Stare at women and think of them as only maternal figures or someone to bang? Beta Male! Regularly treat people like nothing more than tools so he can continue to be self-centered and self-serving? Beta Male! Beta Male! Beta Male!
It’s beyond frustrating.
But beyond all these issues, the story itself is the bigger problem. It’s lackluster. It’s slow moving, tenuous, and framed badly. It jumps through time, skipping over entire sections of characters’ lives which seem to be rather important. Everyone is a vehicle to move the protagonist’s story along at one moment or another, so they’re all thin. And there are too damn many of them. It’s like the author thought this was going to be made into a film and wanted to write in bits parts for all of his friends. There are tons of characters, all over the place, most of which appear for a scene or two, divulge knowledge or information, and are never seen again. It comes off as lazy writing. And because there are so many characters, when tragedy does strike, we never got to really know anyone outside of our annoying protagonist, so there’s no weight or gravitas to draw emotions from the reader.
The entire story is about the wrong person. There are so many other characters with so much more depth than the protagonist. He’s one dimensional, boring, and his growth is both predictable and inevitable from the very beginning of the book. There’s nothing in here to surprise the reader. And the big reveal at the end is so blatantly obvious from the first quarter of the book, it’s inconceivable at least one character wouldn’t have figured out the truth. The way the characters react and respond to events doesn’t make a lot of sense, and it’s because the author is trying to force the story ahead, despite the fact that it isn’t working.
But hey, the villains (what little we get of them) are pretty cool. So… there’s that little bit of icing on an otherwise completely inedible cake.
Yay?