- Hardcover: 713 pages
- Publisher: Wheeler Publishing; Lrg edition (Nov 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1568959486
- ISBN-13: 978-1568959481
- Product Dimensions: 23.7 x 16 x 3.7 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,827,052 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
The fierce invalid in Tom Robbins's seventh novel is a philosophical, hedonistic US operative very loosely inspired by a friend of the author. "Sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll are enormously popular in the CIA", claims Switters. "Not with all the agents in the field, but with the good ones, the brightest and the best". Switters isn't really an invalid, but during his first mission (to set free his ornery grandma's parrot, Sailor, in the Amazon jungle), he gets zapped by a spell cast by a "misshapen shaman" of the Kandakandero tribe named End of Time. The shaman is reminiscent of Carlos Castaneda's giggly guru, but his head is pyramid-shaped. In return for a mind-bending trip into cosmic truth--"the Hallways of Always"--Switters must not let his foot touch the earth, or he'll die.
Not that a little death threat can slow him down. Switters simply hops into a wheelchair and rolls off to further footloose adventures, occasionally switching to stilts. For a Robbins hero, to be just a bit high, not earthbound, facilitates enlightenment. He bops from Peru to Seattle, where he is beguiled by the Art Girls of the Pike Place Market and his 16-year-old stepsister, and then off to Syria, where he falls in with a pack of renegade nuns bearing names like Mustang Sally and Domino Thirry. Will Switters see Domino tumble and solve the mystery of the Virgin Mary? Can the nuns convince the Pope to favour birth control--to "zonk the zygotic zillions and mitigate the multitudinous milt" and "wrest free from a woman's shoulders the boa of spermatozoa?" Can the author ever resist a shameless pun or a mutant metaphor?
The tangly plot is almost beside the point. Switters is a colourful undercover agent, and a Robbins novel is really a colourful undercover essay, celebrating sex and innocence, drugs and a firm wariness of anything that tries to rewire the mind, and Broadway tunes, especially "Send in the Clowns". Some readers will be intensely offended by Switters's yen for youth and idiosyncratic views on vice. But fans will feel that extremism in the pursuit of serious fun is virtue incarnate. Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates is classic Tom Robbins: all smiles, similes and subversion. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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then naked parrot looked like a human fetus spliced onto a kosher chicken. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
then naked parrot looked like a human fetus spliced onto a kosher chicken. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I bought a second copy of this book so I could go to work underlining and dog-ear-ing the pages in an attempt to recall, for future use, the hundred or more glittering concepts I discovered here.
Our Hero, Switters, is a walking, talking, breathing, lusting, meditating symbol for the tesserae that make up the mosaic of the sort of life we all either embrace or deny in every moment. He is a pacifist CIA agent, a pragmatic mystic, a part-time adventurer and full-time romantic, and though captivated by the idea of innocence and purity, he lusts after his teenaged stepsister and ultimately finds her affection returned in the most delightful manner imaginable.
In one particularly memorable conversation, he tells her, "The more advertising I see, the less I want to buy..." Sounds simple, but taken in context of the moment, it unfolds like a rose, with just as many layers of beauty.
The freedom of parrots, a pyramid-shaped head on a South American shaman, Matisse's Blue Nude revealed, Finnegan's Wake, government intelligence policies, the art of stilt walking, renegade nuns and the price we fear we must pay for enlightenment...all these seemingly disparate concepts are not only brought together as a whole, but seamlessly dovetailed to offer an enchanting glimpse of one individual celebrating who-he-really-is by realising that the only price to pay for joy is letting go of fear.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Tom Robbins in top form. A former CIA agent travels from the US to the Amazon rainforest where he is the subject of a curse that confines him to a wheelchair. Via a sojourn in a Syrian convent with renegade nuns our former agent gets caught up in the history of two religions whilst grappling with his sexuality. All this amidst the literary gymnastics and wit of Robbins prose. Outstanding.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
... or more acurately, the spy whose story I loved... Robbins has many strong points: philosophically broad, theologically open-minded, able to string 300 storylines together... but i think his strongest point is in character sketching. Sissy Hankshaw, Ellen Cherry Charles, Bernard Mickey Wrangle and now Switters, who has replaced ECC as my favourite. As mentioned in the synopsis, he's a mass of contradictions, and extremely entertaining for it. I hope TR decides to break mold and write a sequel. Bond wishes he was this cool.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
best book
this is the best book i read have in a long time, the story is so original and good. couldn't put it down, i would recommend it to everyone i know
Published 7 months ago by i love amazon
Best Tom Robbins
Amazing read, pretentious, witty and wild; Tom Robbins creates an amazing storyline through which he preaches unconventionality and sexualism within our todays society. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Angelos Taplatzidis
Superb
I am a relative newcomer to Tom Robbins, but thank the almighty that I came. i picked this book up, started reading it, and about 24 hours later I put it down again, with a... Read more
Published on 6 Oct 2006 by Jeeks
Mr Robbins does it again
Tom Robbins has such a fantastically rich writing style, no metaphor is left unturned, no adjective unexplored. Read more
Published on 10 Sep 2002 by Matthew Salvage
Another amazing book from Tom Robbins
Tom Robbins again manages to create a beautifully crafted novel. The characters are very creative as usual. Read more
Published on 13 Feb 2002 by atemizel@hotmail.com
Superb
First off, I have to admit - I am not quite finished Fierce Invalids. In fact I am something short of half way through. Read more
Published on 11 Dec 2001 by Karl McCann
A slice of brilliance
If you've never read Tom Robbins before, then "Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates" is a wonderful place to start. Read more
Published on 6 Jun 2001
The weird and wonderful world of Tom Robbins is back
Parrots, pyramid shaped heads on South America gurus, Finegan's Wake - they all feature in this latest offering from Tom Robbins. Read more
Published on 9 May 2001 by "al24"
Fierce ride, limp ending
Some years ago, stuck in a village just north of the Kalahari Desert, I wandered into a school library and chanced upon Tom Robbin's 'Jitterbug Perfume'. Read more
Published on 25 Feb 2001
Fierce ride, limp ending
Some years ago, stuck in a village just north of the Kalahari Desert, I wandered into a school library and chanced upon Tom Robbin's 'Jitterbug Perfume'. Read more
Published on 25 Feb 2001
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