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Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

By: Tom Robbins
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: No Exit Press
ISBN: 1842430289
ISBN-13: 9781842430286
Released: 09 Apr 2001
RRP: £9.99
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

The spy who loved me... - By: Craig Baxter, 21 Mar 2007
... or more acurately, the spy whose story I loved... Robbins has many strong points: philosophicallly broad, theologicallly 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 & now Switters, who has replaced ECC as my favourite. As mentioned in the synopsis, he's a mass of contradictions, & extremely entertaining for it. I hope TR decides to break mold & write a sequel. Bond wishes he was this cool.
Superb - By: Jeeks, 06 Oct 2006
I am a relative newcomer to Tom Robbins, but thank the almighty that I came. i picked this book up, started reading it, & about 24 hours later I put it down again, with a bewildered smile on my face, having read the whole thing. As many Robbins fans will know, reading the "whole thing" actuallly equates to reading everything once but quite a lot of everything for a second & third time as you try to work out exactly how he does it. Magical.
Tom Robbins in top form - By: Mel Jones, 17 Nov 2002
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 & wit of Robbins prose. Outstanding.
the mosaic of life - By: Elspeth Fahey, 13 Oct 2002
I bought a second copy of this book so I could go to work underlining & dog-ear-ing the pages in an attempt to recalll, 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 alll either embrace or deny in every moment. He is a pacifist CIA agent, a pragmatic mystic, a part-time adventurer & full-time romantic, & though captivated by the idea of innocence & purity, he lusts after his teenaged stepsister & 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 & the price we fear we must pay for enlightenment...alll 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-reallly-is by realising that the only price to pay for joy is letting go of fear.

Mr Robbins does it again - By: Matthew Salvage, 10 Sep 2002
Tom Robbins has such a fantasticallly rich writing style, no metaphor is left unturned, no adjective unexplored.

We follow Switters on an amazing journey across three continents, meeting a multitude of strange & wonderful characters. The plot twists & turns & unfolds magicallly as each page turns (although apparently, Mr. Robbins never plans his books in advance, it comes straight out of his head & onto the page, making this story even more extraordinary).

I wanted to grab a pen & highlight alll the phrases & sentences that made me chuckle but there were so many, I would have coloured in the whole book :o)

Read & enjoy...