My Mother always wanted to be an Artist, and she specifically wanted to be an Impressionist. So I grew up with prints of the works of Van 
Gogh, Pissaro, Cézanne, Monet, and so on. Mom didn’t like Gauguin, maybe it had something to do with all the topless girls in grass skirts. My personal favorite was always Seurat. She would have loved Sacré Bleu.
Christopher Moore is a fun writer. His topics are often a bit odd, such as vampires, death dealers, and friends of Jesus who somehow missed out being in the Bible.
In Sacré Bleu we find an odd couple randomly killing off Impressionists. One is a beautiful woman and one is a twisted little man. We come to know these two through the eyes of a young boy who is the son of a baker. They are a dark corner of the wondrous world of Paris from 1863 to 1891. Surrounding this dark corner is a world filled with absinthe, brothels, and most of all, Art.
Sacré Bleu is a longish book of almost 400 pages, but my love of the topic and Christopher’s skill at giving life to a long story made it seem a bit shorter than it was. The baker’s son and the blue woman are a couple of people I wouldn’t mind spending more time with.
Like Midnight in Paris, Sacré Bleu is a romantic fantasy about another time when Paris was the center of the universe. Anyone with a few francs to spare could have had a portrait made by one of the many artistic geniuses clutter up the city. The reality of Paris during this time has as much magic going for it as the supernaturals whipped up by Christopher Moore. As the saying goes, if this isn’t how it was, it’s how it should have been.
In a story that spans something on the order of 40 thousand years, a lot of things happen. Some are funny, some are tragic, and some of just a bit silly. It’s a brilliant bit of business that I thoroughly enjoyed. As with all good reads, the fun is discovering what happens next. So go read Sacré Bleu and find out why the color blue is so important to the history of art.
