ce·ta·cean (si-'tA-shawn)
The word comes from the Latin cetus, meaning whale, and refers to marine mammals such as whales and dolphins. You're going to need to know this word, while reading Christopher Moore's newest novel, "Fluke," which I highly suggest you read.
Nathan Quinn is a cetacean biologist. Specifically, he studies humpback whales. More specifically he studies, analyzes, and puzzles about the song of the humpback whale, and has been doing so for 25 years. He does this in the Pacific waters off of Maui with his team of researchers: The distractingly winsome Amy Earhart, a recently acquired research assistant who "looked fantastic in a pair of khaki hiking shorts;" the fiercely loyal Clay Demodicus, Nate's long-time photographer companion; and the perpetually-stoned Kona, a white surfer-Rastafarian, originally from New Jersey, Mon.
The word comes from the Latin cetus, meaning whale, and refers to marine mammals such as whales and dolphins. You're going to need to know this word, while reading Christopher Moore's newest novel, "Fluke," which I highly suggest you read.
Nathan Quinn is a cetacean biologist. Specifically, he studies humpback whales. More specifically he studies, analyzes, and puzzles about the song of the humpback whale, and has been doing so for 25 years. He does this in the Pacific waters off of Maui with his team of researchers: The distractingly winsome Amy Earhart, a recently acquired research assistant who "looked fantastic in a pair of khaki hiking shorts;" the fiercely loyal Clay Demodicus, Nate's long-time photographer companion; and the perpetually-stoned Kona, a white surfer-Rastafarian, originally from New Jersey, Mon.
Nate's obsession with the meaning of humpback song has gotten him into trouble in the past, but never like this. A chance encounter with a whale with disturbingly peculiar markings on its flukes and a predilection for pastrami on rye sets these four mismatched companions on an increasingly bizarre adventure that can only culminate in a showdown with the origins of life on earth itself.
Author of "Practical Demon-Keeping," "Bloodsucking Fiends," and "Lamb - The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal," Moore has a knack for addressing otherworldly, bizarre, or supernatural phenomenon with unparalleled wit. This is certainly the case in "Fluke," in which Moore transports the reader into an outlandishly delightful undersea universe filled with freakish characters that only could be borne from Moore's own divergently-bent mind. While Tom Robbins-esque in his humor, Christopher Moore accomplishes the same task with a subtler and more economical hand than Robbins:
"They were gathered around Clay's giant monitor, which, for all the good it was doing them, could have been a giant monitor lizard. A spectrogram of whale song from Quinn's computer was splashed across the screen, and for the information they were getting from it, it might have been the aftermath of a paint-ball war, which is what it looked like."
"They were gathered around Clay's giant monitor, which, for all the good it was doing them, could have been a giant monitor lizard. A spectrogram of whale song from Quinn's computer was splashed across the screen, and for the information they were getting from it, it might have been the aftermath of a paint-ball war, which is what it looked like."
Did you know that dolphins don't really smile? That all killer whales are named Kevin? Few could package such a vital message like marine mammal conservation as playfully as Christopher Moore has done here. Fluke will leave you grinning like Shamu in a school of disoriented pilot-fish. And if it doesn't, then perhaps you need to consider laying off the Botox injections for a while.
