Title: Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
Author: Tom Robbins
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 386
Count for Year: 8
I was first introduced to Tom Robbins in college by a girl with whom I was infatuated, but who was infatuated with herself and her own pedantry. I later became “un-infatuated” with her after she ran off with a man old enough to be her father, but I never lost my interest in Robbins’ work. The first book by Robbins that I read was Still Life with Woodpecker and is still my favorite. Of course, the one for which he is perhaps most well-known is Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which was later made into an atrocious movie (from what little I saw of it) with Uma Thurman.
This book, while not atrocious, was not up to par with his other works. The first thing that strikes you is that he writes with second-person narration. In this case, you are a stockbroker named Gwen, who over three days between Holy Thursday and Easter Sunday will learn about yourself through encounters with your religious boyfriend and his likewise born-again monkey, an tattooed ex-stockbroker who has cancer, a friend who is a 300-pound psychic and the possibility that amphibians are aliens from outer space.
Sound crazy? It’s just a typical plot for Robbins, who tosses metaphors around like a salad shooter and to no less of a degree in this one. While his metaphors as always are creative, the plot itself goes too far awry toward the end, where he gets bogged down in philosophical asides that go on for pages. It’s like he’s making up his own religion out of his own pedantry — which I guess, in a roundabout way is why that girl I mentioned at the start of this review liked him so much. She was the same way: in love with the sound of her own voice and the witticisms she could invent, although at least in Robbins’ case, they are in the end at least tolerable.
All that said, I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone looking for a good Tom Robbins novel. Stick with Still Life with Woodpecker. If you’re a Robbins fan already, then by all means, check this out. Otherwise, I advise you skip it for better reading fare than this.
Final analysis: 7/10, because while good for Robbins, not anywhere up to par with his better works.
If you’ve reviewed this book, drop me an e-mail at justareadingfool [at] gmail [dot] com and I’ll link to your review at the bottom of this post.
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