As a huge fan of Californication, I had to read God Hates Us All and if I’m completely honest, I kind of wish I hadn’t. If you’re not familiar with what this book is, in the show Californication, the main character is Hank Moody, who is a super famous writer because of his book God Hates Us All which has been turned into a film and all that jazz and someone thought it was a good idea to release this book as though its been written by Hank Moody.
I thought that was really cool at first but once you start reading it, it’s very apparent that it has not been written by Hank Moody, in all honesty it felt to me as though who ever wrote it hadn’t even watched the show since it had none of this ‘great love story’ content that it supposedly had in the show and it was also significantly more pretentious than I could ever imagine Hank writing. I feel that someone who better understood the character (Cough, David Duchovny, Cough) should have been the one to write it.
I’ve seen other reviews talking about the ‘love story’ in this book but was unable to find one myself, sure the main character obviously loved Daphne, his girlfriend, but she also stabbed him and set his parents house on fire so I wouldn’t exactly say I liked her, and for most of the book they had broken up anyway.
A huge amount of this book for me, was just attempted shock factor. It discussed drugs and lust in a way I’ve seen very few books do but to me at least, marijuana isn’t exactly a hard core drug and I was already fully aware of how the business of selling/buying it works so the shock factor didn’t particularly shock me.
Despite how poorly I have spoken of it, it wasn’t all that terrible so long as you don’t go into expecting some kind of great American literature like the show builds you up to expect. It’s a quick and interesting read and though I can’t say I would recommend it, I wouldn’t tell someone not to read it either.
What book would you recommend I read next? I’m planning on reading 50 books this year so I need all the suggestions I can get!
-Dana
Carry on Beautiful! 