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I've been a big fan of James Morrow for a long time, at least 3 decades, since I first read Towing Jehova- a novel about God's corpse floating in the Pacific ocean. Most of his books are high concept fantasies that satirise religious themes.
This one is no exception- as you can probably guess from the title and the cover, this one is taking swings at creationism.
The brain of Charles Darwin has, in good old-fashioned mad scientist fashion, been transplanted into the skull of an ape. It just has- ok. He teams up with a b-movie horror actress to make horror films that will educate the masses in USA about evolutionary theory instead of creationism.
There's an awful lot to take on trust here and the suspension of disbelief necessary is somewhat higher than average.
One of the issues with the satire in this book is that it's aimed squarely at something that isn't a problem outside of selected bits of the USA so it doesn't really hit that hard outside of America.
He's taking swipes at very easy targets, but not targets that are meaningful to the majority of the planet. This lessens the impact as much as the ease of the swing does.
The basic idea is admittedly extremely funny. He's found a way to explain it that does make some sort of sense within the narrative as long as you buy into the world he's built here (although it's also supposed to be our world so...). The portrayal of Hollywood in the transition to talkies actually feels quite real. This is one of the more successful aspects of the story.
As far as I can tell, this book never found a UK publisher, since my copy came from the States. This may be a reflection of the specificity of the satire.
It's good fun to read, but is nowhere near the standard of his other works. Overall disappointing.
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