Rating: 
Summary: If you like Rimbaud, you'll love Switters
Review: This is my favorite Tom Robbins to date, excepting "Jitterbug Perfume" and "Still Life with Woodpecker" -- oh, and "Skinny Legs and All." "Fierce Invalids" is jumping with all those plucky, chewy images that keep Robbins' fans and create robbins' foes. And its hero -- and mine -- is probably the most lovable, real, yet wildly implausible character Robbins has ever let out of his cage. Women sure do love these fierce invalids home from hot climates! Also, Robbins has shed a whole new light on the rather neglected subtleties of the apostophe.
Rating:
Summary: Tom Robbins does it again!
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed every single moment that this book was in my hands. I look forward to reading it again!
Rating: 
Summary: the Wake
Review: "riverrun past eve and adam's..." the first five words of a man's decent into ruin. They appear nowhere in hot invalids (that I know of). Switters, in Fierce Invalids demonstrates how Joyce's Finnigans Wake can destroy your life. Though, Switters had only suffered mildly by the start of the story. Read it as a warning.
Rating: 
Summary: Relax!
Review: Some of my favourite books are by Tom Robbins: Another Roadside Attraction, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Skinny Legs & All. I was ecstatic to receive his new book. But I was not enraptured of the slow start. Slogging through the literal jungle, I found myself thinking of other, more interesting things I could be doing: root canal, ingrown toenail surgery - but pressing onward had its rewards. The information and plodding plot lines in the first half are, I suppose, necessary to set up the thoroughly entertaining noncoincidences in the second. Robbins still has his "festive manner of speaking" but Fierce Invalids lacks the punchy panache of the previous publications. [Sigh] I guess we're all getting older ... The novel exudes the anti-consumerism of Jean Kilbourne's *Deadly Pursuasion* with the CIA-as-monster subtext of Grisham's *The Brethren.* I found the whole Lolita complex preoccupation to be unnecessary. As always, Robbins gives us points to ponder. For instance, on the clarity of speech: "Could you pull off there? " she immediately asked, pointing ... to a gas station. "I really have to use the bathroom." "Say toilet, would you darling. I don't believe bathing is one of the services Texaco provides." "Whatever." "No, it's not unimportant. Intelligent speech is under pressure in our fair land and needs all the support it can get." Of intelligent speech, Tom Robbins remains a master.
Rating:
Summary: Peeple of Zee Wurl...
Review: ...don't read this book. I want it all for myself. Or maybe for a few of my close personal friends so that we can have a special bond between us. This is one of those books that one wishes would remain a hidden gem, a secret society, a one time entrance to a world that is so foreign, it is painfully real. I never read a TR novel (save the three or four times I read the first 10 pages or so of "Still life..."), but, on a lark and a recomendation from an erudite compatriot, I bought it at O'Hare airport on my way to Boston for a trip. What a perfect travelling companion! The juxtaposition between Switters' wide and varried [though, through step after luscious step eminently plausible (? )] travels (internal and external) and the surealism of airports and air-patrons and little-foods-I-refused-while-airborn was uncomfortably entertaining. This is a book I didn't want to end. I found myself slowing my pace toward the end, in a vain attempt to hold on to the last few remnants of... I do appologize for such ramblings. I need to just "relax."
Rating:
Summary: Congratulations from Sammy Rosenstock
Review: There's life and then there's death and in between there is Tom Robbins. "Fierce Invalids..." is a cock in the walk antidote to the blues--better than Prozac, Lithium, Zoloff and Dexedrine all hashed together. "Peeple of zee wurhl, relax.." A zany time machine that hurtles one into yesterday, tomorrow and today with Switters, King of Slida (my kind of mystery man). Robbins certainly knows how to get more than 71 fine words rolling.
Rating:
Summary: He's Still Mr. Unique
Review: No popular author, living or dead, goes places -- in the mind, in the imagination, with words and ideas -- like Tom Robbins does. That alone makes each and every Robbins book a treat unlike any other. Invalids is better than the last two (Pajamas, Legs), a fun read through and through. There's so much to chew over. But I agree with those who say his diatribes have gotten increasingly out of control and are often tiresome. Everything's a little over the top, even his linguistic indulgences. Will we ever again see the measured whimsy of Jitterbug Perfume or Still Life with Woodpecker (my faves)? Nonetheless, thank you Tom, again, for being you!
Rating:
Summary: C.R.A.F.T.y
Review: For twelve sweet hours have I sipped the airy elucidations of the newest Tommy tome. But in that short time, a healthy three hours' sitting, four hours sleeping, I have filled my reeking innards with the fierce, jazzy prose that leaps from its parchment and into my guts. Which, in a manner of speaking, should someday this medium be construed as such, explains this message belched forth in your direction (thought you smelled onions, didn't you). Some 140 pages in, I reflect that Mr. T. is yet to see his equal. Just vat zee doktor prezckribed. Alas, the bacon beckons to be brought homeward, and with the reluctance of all my sinews I must wait to resume this journey through inks and pulps until, at the earliest, the internal intercom pages me to pick up nature's call. Ya gatta give a gander at Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates. So far, it just may be his best.
Rating:
Summary: Shark-tooth Pie
Review: I've read them all at different phases of my life and T.R. has given me AGAIN the will to read. This novel is more mature, honest, and naked than the rest... T.R. exposes more of himself and the in-your-face humanism than he has in any of his other novels. "F.C.I.H.C." is maybe not his most tornado-like epic, but it is by far the most modern and relatable novel he has written. The cast of characters are all people we have either met, heard of, or had as our next door neighbors. The way that T.R. weaves these characters into his epic rug is what keeps the reader turning the pages. The synchronicity and bizarre serendipidousness of these happenings is not just astonishing and entertaining, but downright believable. T.R. is not writing for the sake of selling, he is writing to purge himself of the possible, of the probable, of the "wahoo."
Rating:
Summary: Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates
Review: I, too, have read every book Tom has ever written and anxiously awaited the release of each and every one of them. My feeling regarding Fierce Invalids is that Tom needs to talk to his agent about re-negotiating this book every 2 years deal -- it isn't working. This is the first Robbins novel I have read in which I didn't want to remember this quote or that. However, I must admit for all my dismay, I missed the bus a couple of times deeply engrossed in this novel, and have completely left the planet on more than one occasion. So, as always, this Tom Robbins novel much like all the rest became my address. Switters' secret passion as a linguist was a flimsy excuse for the meandering diatribes. Tom you need more time to flesh things out -- rethink the contract pal; you're too good at what you do to get lost in the mire of the plain and ordinary.
| 
