Dead Again

So, God is dead. Yeah, really. His robed, two-mile-long carcass fell from Heaven and landed in the South Atlantic and, on Anthony Van Horne’s 50th birthday, an angel appears to make the request that the body be moved so the fish don’t eat it. (How could you not want to read this?) So begins Towing Jehovah, James Morrow’s wild, funny, fantastic tale of the supertanker Valparaiso (flying the colors of the Vatican) and its’ unlikely captain charged with the monumental task of towing the corpse to the Arctic to save it from sharks and decomposition.

Van Horne is not to attempt this task alone. He receives dubious help from the Catholic Church, his feminist lover, his less-than-religious crew, and a host of angels and cherubim. The sabotage manufactured by those actually out to stop him is only a shade less beneficial than the proffered assistance… With friends like those, who needs prayer? Besides, things don’t really start to go wrong until the crew finds out God not only has a belly button, but NAUGHTY BITS as well!

Not being of a very religious bend and since I’d read a couple other of Morrow’s books, I knew this one would entertain. I never expected to laugh out loud or say to myself, “No. Fucking. Way.” Towing Jehovah is too smart to just be satire and too comical to be a sanctioned dissertation. It is insightful, clever, and sometimes frighteningly real in portraying the human condition as it truly should be: accountable only to each other.