Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

by Tom Robbins

Paperback, 2001

Call number

FIC ROB

Collection

Publication

Bantam (2001), Edition: Reissue ed., 464 pages

Description

Fiction. Literature. Thriller. Humor (Fiction.) HTML:“As clever and witty a novel as anyone has written in a long time . . . Robbins takes readers on a wild, delightful ride. . . . A delight from beginning to end.”—Buffalo News 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 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, discovering in the process the “true” Third Secret of Fatima, we experience Tom Robbins—that fearless storyteller, spiritual renegade, and verbal break dancer—at the top of his game. On one level this is a fast-paced CIA adventure story with comic overtones; on another it’s a serious novel of ideas that brings the Big Picture into unexpected focus; but perhaps more than anything else, Fierce Invalids is a sexy celebration of language and life. Praise for Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates “Superb.”—New York Post   “Dangerous? Wicked? Forbidden? You bet. . . . Pour yourself a bowl of chips and dig in.”—Daily News, New York  “Robbins is a great writer . . . and definitely a provocative rascal.”—The Tennessean “Whoever said truth is stranger than fiction never read a Tom Robbins novel. . . Clever, creative, and witty, Robbins tosses off impassioned observations like handfuls of flower petals.”—San Diego Union-Tribune.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member beau.p.laurence
One of his funniest. although I kept wondering just how long this poor man had gone without sex when he wrote it ;~)
LibraryThing member kuuursten
Robbins can do no wrong. He is wildly entertaining, always, but especially in this.
LibraryThing member tessa00
By far the most delightful, unexpected, boisterous, enchanting and entertaining book I've ever read. It is wonderful and unconventionally inspirational.
LibraryThing member garylatman
Robbins as the master of metaphor, Robbins as spiritual explorer of alternative reality, and creator of the anti-hero --- all of these qualities emerge like a good acid trip in Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates.
LibraryThing member Cecilturtle
Robbins at his best with a look at espionage
LibraryThing member SpencerM
One of the handful of books I have read and thoroughly enjoyed more than once. Tom Robbins at his twisted finest. Art, jungle intrigue, religion, and a schooling in names for the hoo hoo; what more could one ask for in a book?
LibraryThing member cpprpnny770
One of Robbins' best works. Again his characters are unbelievably eccentric--a witch doctor with a pyramid shaped head. A matisse model turned nun; rogue cia agents,and let's not forget the bald parrot! Throw in a Vatican cover-up of prophesies from an apparition of the Virgin Mary and a witch
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doctor's curse that the protagonists feet must never touch the ground again, and you have an awfully entertaining tale with TR giving it to the Catholic church again. Robbins' analogies make me laugh out loud!
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LibraryThing member shiray
One of my favorite books ever. If you're not hooked after the first 5 or 10 pages, then don't bother.
LibraryThing member mamorico
One of my favorite pieces of contemporary fiction. Robbins is hysterical.
LibraryThing member .Monkey.
There is just never anything negative to say about Tom Robbins. He writes utterly bizarre outlandish stories but somehow they just work, he manages to make these crazy tales into things that force you to really work your mind, think, and gain new perspectives on life & the world.
LibraryThing member sfisk

Not as fast paced and lacking some of his usual wit. I prefer his first 4 or 5 novels to this one...
LibraryThing member elvahaley
Tom Robbins is brilliant. This novel is wonderful. Nuns, grandmothers, and shamen will never be the same in my mind. This work is reminiscent of Black Narcissus, although Invalids has a lot more sex.
LibraryThing member gmillar
I really enjoyed listening to this novel. I think the reader was pretty special but, that notwithstanding, I loved the way Mr. Robbins played with words and made word pictures. I even liked the jackass-ishness of the main character. His storytelling style resonated with me I guess. I was a little
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disappointed with the ending though; I'm not sure what I would have liked and I wasn't expecting any particular event to finish the work but I was left a little high and dry.
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LibraryThing member blake.rosser
I can't help thinking of Tom Robbins as a poor man's Vonnegut: much more (too) flowery writing with much less interesting ideas
LibraryThing member ljhliesl
It is unfair to read any book with Infinite Jest in mind because almost any other book will suffer. Add to that my 24-year-old bias about Tom Robbins, whom I had never attempted but had shelved plenty as a library page before my first boyfriend dismissed his best friend���s favorite author as
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���pseudo-intellectual bullshit.��� I was 17 and smitten, so Robbins didn���t stand a chance.

Friends whose judgments I value even though our tastes vary like Robbins in general and this book in particular, and one nominated it for bookclub. Another whose taste overlaps with mine more liked it a lot; another couldn���t get into it; another was struggling with it. I read, interrupting Wallace to do so, and was ready to abandon it when I suspected Parrot Abuse in addition to Parrot Mortality (but it was only Parrot Mortality, brief and off-screen), but I read on.

But all I could see is Not Wallace. Robbins tries too hard in his word play, stretching out a metaphor into a paragraph-length digression, whereas Wallace, who might have put forth the same or more effort, has better results and doesn���t let you see him sweat. Robbins���s protagonist, Switters, cares about word use and etymology (like IJ's Avril Incandenza), and he corrects someone for saying ���very unique,��� but less than a page later, in narration, Robbins says ���more perfect.��� An author isn���t necessarily his character, but with Switters so very much like Robbins in verbiage and with the ���misuse��� of perfect so closely following the quibble about ���unique,��� Robbins looks sloppy.

Infinite Jest has wheelchairs, so does this; Infinite Jest plays on Hamlet (on more levels than title alone), and Robbins���s ���slings and eros��� was my final straw.

But I finished it.
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LibraryThing member dbsovereign
I love every one of Robbins' books - each for its own unique humor and zany take on reality. Though fantastic and improbable, his stories always ring true on a certain level - mostly because they are so wonderfully charming. He makes us want to meet his goofy characters and get drunk with them.
LibraryThing member satyridae
I haven't been able to finish a Robbins since Still Life. But I keep trying. I begin to forget why.
LibraryThing member MarkPSadler
This book was listed recently in EW as one of Johnny Dep's favorite. Dep seems the kind of fella that's off the deep end in taste so I thought I would read it and see why he liked it so much.
It is kind if hard to appreciate a protagonist who is a pedophile and who engages in anal sex with a nun.
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Perhaps this gives us... insight as to Dep's relationship with Roman Polanski!
Robbins uses wonderful flowery, flowing language, however he bleeds this over into his characters speech. Although American's can be sarcastic they are not droll and have the dry humour of the British however Switters, the CIA agent, seems to take on decidedly MI5 characteristics. Perhaps Robbins should leave the spy telling to the author that does it best, John Le Carre.
Don't get me wrong I loved the language and I have no scruples about reading about pedophilia and anal intercourse with a nun, I just don't want my hero, flawed as he maybe, the have these faults. It makes one just a little squeamish and unable to relax enough to really enjoy Robbins wonderful language.
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LibraryThing member MarkPSadler
This book was listed recently in EW as one of Johnny Dep's favorite. Dep seems the kind of fella that's off the deep end in taste so I thought I would read it and see why he liked it so much.
It is kind if hard to appreciate a protagonist who is a pedophile and who engages in anal sex with a nun.
Show More
Perhaps this gives us... insight as to Dep's relationship with Roman Polanski!
Robbins uses wonderful flowery, flowing language, however he bleeds this over into his characters speech. Although American's can be sarcastic they are not droll and have the dry humour of the British however Switters, the CIA agent, seems to take on decidedly MI5 characteristics. Perhaps Robbins should leave the spy telling to the author that does it best, John Le Carre.
Don't get me wrong I loved the language and I have no scruples about reading about pedophilia and anal intercourse with a nun, I just don't want my hero, flawed as he maybe, the have these faults. It makes one just a little squeamish and unable to relax enough to really enjoy Robbins wonderful language.
Show Less
LibraryThing member MarkPSadler
This book was listed recently in EW as one of Johnny Dep's favorite. Dep seems the kind of fella that's off the deep end in taste so I thought I would read it and see why he liked it so much.
It is kind if hard to appreciate a protagonist who is a pedophile and who engages in anal sex with a nun.
Show More
Perhaps this gives us... insight as to Dep's relationship with Roman Polanski!
Robbins uses wonderful flowery, flowing language, however he bleeds this over into his characters speech. Although American's can be sarcastic they are not droll and have the dry humour of the British however Switters, the CIA agent, seems to take on decidedly MI5 characteristics. Perhaps Robbins should leave the spy telling to the author that does it best, John Le Carre.
Don't get me wrong I loved the language and I have no scruples about reading about pedophilia and anal intercourse with a nun, I just don't want my hero, flawed as he maybe, the have these faults. It makes one just a little squeamish and unable to relax enough to really enjoy Robbins wonderful language.
Show Less
LibraryThing member KevinRubin
"Too damned vivid!" is Switters' repeated phrase through the whole book.

Can you go wrong with a book in which the main character's claim to fame among his coworkers is knowing the word for female genitalia in over 70 languages?

Switters begins the story as a CIA field agent, until on a mission in
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South America he and a British traveller meet a shaman who might be real. The shaman curses both of them, but neither really believes it, till the British guy talks Switters into a test of his, and when the British fellow dies instantly, Switters then believes the power of the shaman's curse. Switters' curse is he'll die if ever his feet touch the ground again.

Returning in a wheelchair to his home in Seattle he resigns from the CIA and lives a miserable life of pity that he's confined to his wheelchair, even though he can jump up on the seat and dance...

Decided to investigate the curse some more, he goes out to travel the world again, eventually discovering he can use stilts, and even one inch stilts and almost walk normal again.
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LibraryThing member AliceAnna
A lovely interlude from reality. How could one explain the plot of this little tome -- a CIA agent goes to South America to release his grandmother's aging parrot back into the wild but ends up getting a spell cast on him by a pyramid-headed shaman that forbids him for setting foot on ground, thus
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confining him to a wheelchair and later stilts provided by former nuns cloistered in Syria with names such as Masked Beauty, ZuZu and Bob. Only Tom Robbins would come up with this stuff. A nice take on religion too. Not my favorite Robbins, but close to the top.
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LibraryThing member BookConcierge
This is an "interesting" read ... it was a book club selection or I don't think I would have chosen it for myself. He has some very interesting, strong female characters, but his writing is NOT for everyone. I haven't read anything else by Robbins, but I wouldn't rule him out.

Awards

Audie Award (Finalist — 2001)

Pages

464

ISBN

055337933X / 9780553379334
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