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Fool by Christopher Moore
I just utterly adore this book in every way. I'm sure it has problems but I am a shallow reader, so it's fine for me.
I loved Fool even if it is lower on my list of Christopher Moore favorites! The first time I read a Moore book was when I was still in the Army and deployed with a copy of Fluke and I loved it so much I wrote to him to praise it. He ended up sending me a bunch of his books, all signed, with a note that said "thanks for reading, I hope you don't die" in his humorous tone.
Fluke, the Bloodsucking Fiends trilogy, A Diety Job, Lamb, Island of the Sequined Love Nun, Lust Lizard, and Sacre Bleu are my top favorites for just being so darn entertaining, humorous, clever and an absolute joy to read.
To anyone wondering about Fool, it is written in a similar vein to Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead (which retells Shakespeare's Hamlet from the point of view of the two titular minor characters). Fool re-tells the story of King Lear but told from the perspective of the king's jester, the professional fool. It is hilarious and does a great job at showing the significance of the jester and all the things he's doing when not shown on stage during King Lear.
I read it with just the faintest recollection of the events of King Lear and still enjoyed it, but for anyone unfamiliar it might be worth watching something like Anthony Hopkins' King Lear beforehand to see how cleverly Moore put his version together, but it is not a requirement by any means!
Ah! That's really cool that he replied to you!
I have a difficult time reading and Fool is one I return to often and read from front to back. It's definitely my favorite of his so far, but I haven't read too many others.
Fool really does define itself out of a lot of his other works since it is based in Shakespeare's world. If you like that kind of pre-existing, historical type of setting, I might recommend Sacre Bleu. Moore explores Vincent Van Gogh's superstitions about using the color blue in his paintings and how it connects to his maddening and unusual death. Even without knowing a ton about art or famous artists, he really did a good job bringing in every major player from Monet to Degas as characters in the book in a way that explained who they are and what role they play, all with an inventive and entertaining supernatural explanation as to why so many 19th century artists were a bit bonkers.
That said, I just found out Moore created a Fool trilogy with Pocket going on to be the main character in the sequels The Serpent of Venice and Shakespeare for Squirrels (I also just found out he did a sequel to A Dirty Job which I'd always longed for)! Needless to say, now that I know they exist, they're all going on my reading list!