Customer Rating:
Summary: A polarizing book.
Comment: It seems to me that Tom Robbins books are hit or miss. This book is one of the more polarizing titles. However, I think its gotten a bad rap. Considerably shroter than most of his books, I think its enjoyable as a quick read. I guess some people want and expect something longer from Robbins.

I was a little set-off by the beastiality scenes early in the story. But you really have to check a lot of things at the door when reading a Robbins novel, because he always has weird things abound.

This book is best enjoyed as a summer read. Perhaps its not the best introduction to Tom Robbins.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: KNOCK! KNOCK! "who's there?" LOTS OF PADDING!
Comment: Tom Robbins is a decent writer: his prose is enjoyable and frequently witty, and he has a knack for working in interesting trivia as he explores the dynamics of the human condition. I liked "Still Life" and "Jitterbug Perfume" for these reasons. "Villa Incognito" was a decent attempt to continue this tradition, but sadly falls short on several levels, and for several reasons.

It seems as if he had a nub of a decent idea to start with, but creatively ran out of steam near the end and just forced a contrived "everything works out for the best" ending on it.

VI would probably have worked as a short story, but it feels fluffed out to near-book-length. There are several characters which do absolutely nothing to advance the plot, and quite a bit of detail about the setting that, ultimately, serves no purpose. It's almost as if Robbins submitted a 200-page manuscript to the publisher, and got the response back "sorry, but minimum length needs to be 250 pages" so he threw in his research notes and whipped up a couple of extra characters just for filler. Filler which is OBVIOUSLY filler is bad, and there's just too much of it in this book for my tastes.

Ultimately, this was a let-down, but only because I've seen that Robbins has done better. That said, it's a quick read and still offers a few chuckles, so if you have a long plane trip to kill, keep your expectations reasonable and give it a go.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Busted Book
Comment: Very sorry he even attempted this tragic demise of his style and talent. Compared to his other tremendous works, I have to wonder why he sent this underdeveloped and wandering screed to press.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: recommended only for the Tom Robbins completist
Comment: For such a brilliant opening line, the rest of the book is just trampled hot trash. A thin plot with even thinner characters wrapped around... Well, there was no kernel to wrap all that around. A few enjoyable moments in a gracefully short novel but a stain about this author's name.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Slippery lipidity is not enough
Comment: Robbins may have flown tush over teacup into the literary stratosphere with a succession of sporadically acclaimed and not infrequently best-selling books, but he hasn't forgotten his roots. As he explains in Villa Incognito: "All Carolina folk are crazy for mayonnaise, mayonnaise is as ambrosia to them, the food of their tarheeled gods. Mayonnaise comforts them, causes the vowels to slide more musically along their slow tongues, appeasing their grease-conditioned taste buds while transporting those buds to a plane higher than lard could ever hope to fly."
Isn't it so? Do we not, as a polity, gloriously wallow in "this inanimate seductress, this goopy glorymonger, this alchemist in a jar."? Or are our grocers misreading us when they proffer the never-ending discount on slipperily lipidic eggy whiteness at the end of aisle three?
The author of nine weirdly contorted and squishily sexy romps, from Another Roadside Attraction (1971) to Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976), to my favorites, Still Life with Woodpecker (1980) and Jitterbug Perfume (1984) and on to the vaguely disappointing Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates (2000), and the equally recherché current title, Robbins is not a prolific writer. As he said in a 2000 interview with January Magazine " ... I probably spend as much time on one sentence as John Grisham spends on five chapters."
In that interview he limned his muse thus: "What I try to do, among other things, is to mix fantasy and spirituality, sexuality, humor and poetry in combinations that have never quite been seen before in literature."
Perhaps what pales for longtime readers is that we have seen it before, in Robbins' own work. Perhaps, also, this explains why his core audience remains post-adolescent, a demographic for whom much is new. Nor is this a damning critique -- someone needs to be the can opener for young, impressionable brains. But dashed hopes are hard on the heart, and Prozac is no substitute for the hope that Robbins' rabbit hole romping would carry us past his leering Jabberwocks into Canaan or Sybaris.

In a nutshell? Don't bother with this one.

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