Grinnell's Readers Rendezvous discussion

1. How does the opening scene at Rachel's bedside, in which Charlie first encounters Minty Fresh, foreshadow Charlie's reluctant role as
Death Merchant?
2. How do the efforts of the Morrigan (Babd, Nemain, and Macha) and Orcus to reclaim the Above with their dark powers come into
conflict with Charlie's work as a Death Merchant?
3. A number of characters in A Dirty Job are primarily comic, most notably the Hellhounds, Alvin and Mohammed, and Sophie's babysitters,
Mrs. Korjev and Mrs. Ling. Why might the author have chosen to incorporate so much humor into a novel about the business of death?
4. Why does Charlie avoid discussing his secret identity with his sister, Jane, who serves as his sounding board and shoulder to cry on
throughout the novel?
5. Weird things happen in the San Francisco of A Dirty Job. How did you reconcile the impossibly fantastic occurrences in this novel with
the more commonplace events?
6. How are Audrey and the squirrel people significant in ending the reign of the Morrigan, and why do Charlie and Audrey fall in love with
each other so suddenly?
7. How does Inspector Alphonse Rivera facilitate Charlie's mission against the Morrigan, and in what respects does he impede it?
8. How does the revelation of Sophie as the Luminatus alter the course of the novel, and Charlie's role as hero, and how was Sophie's
role foreshadowed early on in A Dirty Job?
9. "Heartbreak is the natural habitat of the Beta Male." To what extent do Charlie's heroics in the sewer succeed in elevating him from
the Beta Male category in which he classifies himself to an Alpha Male?
10. In what respects does the death of Charlie Asher at the end of A Dirty Job seem inevitable? Were you at all surprised that the author
decided to kill him off?

1. Washington Post Book World 2006 contained the annual holiday shopping guide for Best Fiction and Best Non-Fiction. Nestled snugly among them was A Dirty Job. Humor is the reason to pick up A Dirty Job, but why can’t the book be completely written off as purely mindless entertainment?
2. "Heartbreak is the natural habitat of the Beta Male." To what extent do Charlie's heroics in the sewer succeed in elevating him from the Beta Male category in which he classifies himself to an Alpha Male?
3. How does Chris Moore turn the saddest observation ‘Most of the people Charlie encounters have no souls at all, at one point he estimates that there must be millions of people wandering the earth without souls’ into something optimistic?
4. What was the assassin squirrel person doing trying to attack Sophie? At the time it sure implied that the squirrel people were bad guys, but we learn differently later of course.
5. Audrey transferred his soul into a squirrel person. What do you think his soul object was? (Interesting note - one of the participants said it had to be a CD because Minty Fresh picked it up and he only picked up CDs... until she said that I was going with the majority thinking it was the sword/cane)
6. They are happening at the same time, but while A Dirty Job covers 6 years, the time frame of Fiends and You Suck are considerably shorter. At any given time in your life, do you feel you may be playing a bit part in someone else’s life, even though you are the star of yours?
7. The idea of soul objects , common items which can hold a person’s soul- is purely Moore’s. “I own my father's State Highway Patrol hat,” he explains. “Since he died on the job, they handed it to me at the funeral, when they handed the flag to my mother, so it has a feeling of soul to it. My dad was a cop twenty-four seven, whether he was working or not. He told me once that he would have been a highway patrolman even if they didn't pay him to do it, so I feel a lot of him in his Smokey Bear hat.” What would be your soul object when you die?
8. Do you think the author left the identity of the Luminatus a mystery until the end of the novel or did everyone but Charlie figure it out?
9. What do you think of the cover of the book?
10. Did you take the quiz for your husband? What did you think of the quiz?
11. Do you think it is the case that women overlook betas on a regular basis?
12. Did anyone want Charlie and the sewer harpie to get together?
13. A reviewer has been quoted as saying , Moore is not in any sense politically correct, his women are often sex objects and his ethnic characters hew to stereotype in comic fashion (the Chinese babysitter steals every sort of animal for her stewpot), etc’ And yet he dedicate to hospice workers? Did certain parts of A Dirty Job affect you emotionally? Why did it evoke those emotions?
14. Moore’s book benefits from an instructional paradox he cannily exploits. Nothing enhances Charlie’s life like death. “Until he became Death, he'd never felt so alive” writes Moore. Do you think embracing what we fear enlarges our soul?
15. What was the point of Charlie dying? Did Charlie have to die?
16. What do you think Sophie will be like as a teenager and adult?
17. Do you see A Dirty Job as a movie or a TV series?