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Summary: Dots, dots, everywhere dots...
Review: Some talk about Robbins dexterity with words; some about his seemingly off-beat themes; some about his, well...sex, but reading his books, I find, is more like a game of connecting the dots than anything thing else. It's not possible to review Fierce Invalids From Hot Climates so here are some of the dots: G Guys, a parodying parrot, a shaming shaman (isn't there always?), a less than luminescent Lolita, a wake for Finnegan, a nun at first sight, carnal knowledge (the 'c' is silent), forgetting feet, Vaseline (my personal favorite) and a Pope whose boys might say nope. If you can connect them then don't bother reading the book; if you can't give it a try.
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Summary: Typical Robbins
Review: Typical Tom Robbins... sex,drugs,rock&roll and existentialism. An enjoyable read.
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Summary: Sorry, Tom, but not this time
Review: I'm a loyal reader. I have my favorites--Carre, Vonnegut--and I'm willing to cut them some slack when they take side routes in their literary careers.I believe this is the case with FIHHC: the ingredients were there, but the themes just didn't end up being developed (I should have been wary when I read one book review that said this was TR's "most accessible book to date"; maybe a sign that the wrong people could get into it?). There were no lasting impressions that I walked away with, and the ending appeared to be just too easy, too neatly packaged. Switters just didn't give me the impression that he was any better (or worse) by the end of the novel than he was at the beginning. I still have one TR book left to read--Even Cowgirls Get the Blues--and I expect to fully enjoy it. I look forward to the sheer joy of that uncontrolled energy that ripped me apart in Jitterbug Perfume and Skinny Legs and All. Good try, Tom. You had a lot of players on base, but you just couldn't knock them in this time.
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Summary: Just when you're wondering how to have fun this summer...
Review: Once upon a time I dyed my hair red (okay, strawberry blond) in response to a Tom Robbins book. Since then I've read every one -- Robbins is an extraordinarily good writer, thinker, philosopher -- not to mention charming and amusing. Reading his prose is a mental treat. Fierce Invalids is no exception, in fact in ranks up there with the best -- Even Cowgirls Get The Blues and Jitterbug Perfume (in my opinion). The book is thought provoking, can make you laugh out loud, and perhaps get teary. I'm recommending this book to all my friends as a great way to spend summer reading hours. Robbins is not for those who are faint of heart or closed of mind -- but who wants to be spend their time reading books that are?
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Summary: a pretty darned groovy read
Review: First of all, I really liked this book. HOWEVER, using the other Robbins books as a scale, I'd put it on a par with "Another Roadside Attraction." It wasn't as dizzyingly intricate as "Jitterbug Perfume" or "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues." However the protagonist, Switters, (refreshing that he was a HE) was more likable than Gwen the Yuppie in "Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas." This book is a must for Robbins fans. (by the way, why o why isn't our man Robbins more prolific?)
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Summary: Yet another triumph of lighthearted literature...
Review: TR is an absolute artist with words. He paints his stories with broad strokes, using vocabulary, humor, and a cynical wit as his medium of choice. Fierce Invalids is yet another masterpiece from the incomparable, *unique* Mr. Robbins.
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Summary: Worth the wait
Review: Tom Robbins is wonderful. There is no one, in my opinion, that can take me to places I would only want to dream of. Usually I will read a book in two days; Fierce Invalids was savoured. I didn't want to miss one word! If it takes Robbins this long to write his next book "it" will be worth the wait. His characters stay with you forever, and I love that about him.
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Summary: Readers of the World, Enjoy!
Review: Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates works its literary magic quite literally all over the world and all over the worlds of human significance, refusing to leave anything out of this particular helping of the Robbins mojo. There's not a hemisphere of the globe or the brain not shuffled into this surging meditation on male and female sexuality, on disenfranchisement and freedom, on brotherhood and (S)sisterhood, on love and friendship, on belief and doubt, and on the paradoxes out of which life emerges. In this world, the heroic dimension of Pee Wee Herman breaks on through the absurd cant of political demagogues, and pyramidically-headed Amazonian shamans grasp the truths of the human sould much better than do Presidents or Popes. The defrocked, whether nuns or CIA operatives, realize the value of their beliefs in the very moments that cut them loose from the more stultifying tedium of their official chores. As in other Robbins novels, it is when we are in the presence of those who believe they know what's right or best for others that we are in the presence of evil, here represented by the more orthodox members of "Organizations" like the Roman Catholic Church, the CIA, and the IRS. Robbins's protagonist, one recently defrocked company operative named Switters, plays the point man in this fast-break of a novel that weaves its way through the Pacific Northwest, the Amazon River basin, and the Syrian desert, with a toilet stop in Vatican City. Like Bernard Wrangle and Larry Diamond before him, Switters provides the guts, brains, vision, raunch, and dedication to this friends and his philosophy that drives this novel. That Switters drives a wheelchair and stalks the desert sands on stilts for much of Fierce Invalids renders him only slightly less agile than Isaiah Thomas, Magic Johnson, or Michael Jordan at their high-flying, twisting and turning best. Best yet, the conditions that prevent Switters from making full contact with the earth give him a perspective from at least three inches above terra firma, a silly three inches, perhaps, but a silliness that grants him the perspective of the Bodhisattva, whose enlightened state enables him to act in but not of this world. Robbins doesn't settle for that dichotomy, however, and Switters wants it all, his glory is being in and of the world, and deep in the pudding of life, intrigue, mystery, and those Walt Whitmanian "procreative urges" that glorify this tour of duty. Switters revels in his missions, whether they place him in harms way freeing an aging parrot into something resembling his native habitat, delivering arms to Kurdish freedom fighters, or struggling to satisfy the yearnings of the purest forms of innocence. Fierce Invalids teems with brilliant creations, its metaphors and boldly imagined scenarios no less than its characters like "Don't Call Me Grandma" Maestra, Today is Tomorrow, Bobby Case, Sisters Domino Thiry, Mustang Sally, Zu Zu, and Bopb. Robbins's finely reslized dialogue writing couples with some of his most brilliantly realized locales and situations to make this novel something like the ultimate Tom Robbins novel, at least to date. Some might still regard Robbins as a "philosopher clown," but we have to remember that phillsopher clowns are philosophers, after all, but ones who believe that languages other than the jargon ridden argots of drily acaemic philosophy ferret out the intricacies of the human condition better than do the often pointlessly abstruse musings of the ivory tower. In Fierce Invalids, Robbins wrestles with all the demons, all the complexity of modern existence and luxuriates in a joyful embrace with the absolute and to mingle with the mud, the blood, and the beer of daily urges and ideas. This is one spectacular read!
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Summary: A literary feast
Review: Throw into Tom Robbins' blender characters and settings drawn from Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and motifs from Still Life with Woodpecker, and Another Roadside Attraction. Season with his trademark fulminations on birth control, organized religion, cheerfulness and other assorted politically provocative buzz items that Robbins keeps in plentiful supply in his scribe's spice rack. Punch the button marked "chopped" and fire away. Once a cole slaw consistency has been achieved, pour into a warm, velvety, tomato-y broth of thesaurus-enriched vocabulary and you have the makings for his latest novel Fierce Invalids Home from Warm Climates. If one is recuperating from a heart cathaterization process that gave death the slip anew this cornucopia of philosophy, rant, spell-binding musical verse will refresh the body, renew the mind and replenish the spirit. There is no doubt that Robbins is a well-read, erudite middle-aged rebel; and a man of manners as is befitting his Southern heritage. He charms one's soul in his way with words, myths and story. However there is a tendency to pour it on a bit much in the middle section of the book. There were passages wherein the author's own prideful narcissism pestered the reader like a persistent mosquito. For the reader, the trip through the Peruvian Amazon was as tedious as Switters himself found it to be. Still, I was wonderfully entertained, provoked and transported to the wonderful worlds of Robbins. I commend his craftsmanship in composition and depth. I recommend this book to all who wish to stand on the edge of the world and to see a universe in "whose light we see light."
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Summary: ...Making his entrance again with his usual flair, ...
Review: Tom Robbins proves that joy and laughter, and the interconnectedness of all things, are the essential forces that move the world. To fully appreciate everything about this delicious read, I recommend you review the movie "American Beauty" while you await the arrival of the brown corrugated cardboard bundle of joy. Then... Read this book, and experience the luscious, dripping pleasure of words brought together for the first time, to their own surprise and delight, in sequences that stimulate every synapse you have. Read it with a friend, and amplify your excitement and love of the scrumptious C.R.A.F.T(h)ing of this expedition.
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