A review by penguin_horowitz
Sock by Penn Jillette

2.0

What begins as a potentially interesting, Gothic romp through the mind of a terrible sock monkey in the midst of a murder mystery devolves into an all-out attack on religion. It's depressing to watch a novel with a lot of dark, intriguing ideas become a simple delivery vessel for Jillette's pure hatred of religion. I can't go below 2 stars here, because the writing's solid, and this book had me thinking and flipping pages pretty fast, but it's final on-the-nose "message" undercuts what makes the book work in the first place--humanity's bizarre imagination and the beautifully absurd notion that a eveb music-obsessed foul-mouthed sock puppet can tell a story. Sock puppets are not a gateway drug to violent religious extremism, and the fact that this book seems to seriously think that they are hurts the integrity of what could have been a great novel.