Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates: Summary and book reviews of Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates by Tom Robbins, plus links to an excerpt from Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates and a biography of Tom Robbins.
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates
by Tom Robbins
Hardcover: May 2000,
432 pages.
Paperback: May 2001,
480 pages.
In Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, his seventh and biggest novel, the wise, witty, always gutsy Tom Robbins brings onstage the most complex and compelling character he has ever created.
Switters is a contradiction for all seasons: an anarchist who works for the government, a pacifist who carries a gun, a vegetarian who sops up ham gravy, a cyberwhiz who hates computers, a robust bon vivant who can be as squeamish as any fop, a man who, though obsessed with the preservation of innocence, is aching to deflower his high-school-age stepsister (only to become equally enamored of a nun ten years his senior).
Yet there is nothing remotely wishy-washy about Switters. He doesn't merely pack a pistol. He is a pistol.
And as we dog Switters's strangely elevated heels across four continents, in and out of love and danger, Robbins explores, challenges, mocks, and celebrates virtually every major aspect of our mercurial era.
As many readers well know, to describe a Tom Robbins plot does not begin to describe a Tom Robbins novel. Moreover, the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author, with his love of language, nuance, and surprise, is as opposed to story summations as J.D. Salinger. It is revealing, however, to learn what things Robbins lists as having influenced the writing of Fierce Invalids:
"This book was inspired by an entry from Bruce Chatwin's journal, by a CIA agent I met in Southeast Asia, by the mystery surrounding the lost prophecy of the Virgin of Fatima, by the increasing evidence that the interplay of opposites is the engine that runs the universe, and by embroidered memories of old Terry and the Pirates comic books."
Robbins also has said that throughout the writing of Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates he was guided by the advice of Julia Child: "Learn to handle hot things. Keep your knives sharp. Above all, have a good time."
Perhaps that is why he has managed to write a provocative, rascally novel that takes no prisoners--and yet is upbeat, romantic, meaningful, adventurous, edifying, and fun.
New York Post
In his seventh, and perhaps most complex novel to date, Robbins shines as brilliantly as he has in the past...superb current social commentary.
Kirkus Reviews
A lot of fun, but less so if an overdeveloped sense of reader-duty wont let you pass by the plot-stopping diatribes that have become Robbins' habit.
Thomas Pynchon
Tom Robbins has a grasp on things that dazzles the brain and he's also a world-class storyteller.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Josiah Way too many words The idea for this book should have stayed home in the mind of Robbins. Way too many words and very little content. I would only recommend this book to someone who has read all the other books by the author and I love most of those. The ending... Read More
Rated of 5
by Canuck
Totally awesome, takes stereotypes flips them upside down and knocks the sense out of them
Rated of 5
by Biscuit
Brilliant, witty, sick but yet what everyone thinks (or should)!
Rated of 5
by Bob
Tom Robbins has slipped the dream into reality, fiction into history, and Switters into Bangkok. Philisophically brilliant, religiously enticing, and downright histerical, I'll never look at a nun the same way!!!
Rated of 5
by Brian Hartley
The best central character i have ever read.
Rated of 5
by Ruby Lipps
This is Tom Robbins at his finest...again. His mind's eye allows him to put out incredibly creative narrative descriptions. His command of language is impressive. Some of his “action” might not be for everyone but his writing is so exquisite I... Read More
A rollicking Washington tale about a media firestorm swirling around a vast Hole in Texas and one obscure scientist who gets swept up in the vortex.
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Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism, and deep contradictions, at the heart of the Enlightenment.
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Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
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Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
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U.S. ebook sales up in 2012, but rate of growth is slowing(May 16 2013) In 2012, trade book sales (i.e. non academic book sales) rose 6.9%, to $15.049 billion, and e-book sales continued to grow, although the rate of growth...
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Thomas Pynchon
of 5
by Josiah
of 5
by Canuck
of 5
by Biscuit
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