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Title: Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins ISBN: 0-553-34897-3 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 April, 1990 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (124 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The Unified Field Theory of Love in small doses.
Comment: A friend of mine who knows I am a big Tom Robbins fan asked me to appear before her Reading Group to discuss another Robbins novel and I was asked to describe Robbins body of work. I said that Robbins collected works were sort of like a family of 12 where all the kids had one parent, say the mother, in common but all of whom had different fathers, and all of whom were raised in different religions. In a sense everybody's all together yet they are all over the place.
Robbins reminds me of Jonathan Lethem--a world-class author with a visionary imagination, a densely intellectual approach to writing, and a skewed worldview of epic proportions. Still Life is in reality pretty much an "average" Robbins novel, but that is in fact sort of like saying that the Hope Diamond is your "average" 80-carat diamond.
What sets Still Life apart for me is that, though written many years ago, it's totally contemporary. Ralph Nader is a major minor character--and what you see here about him is as relevant as it was when the book was written. The Woodpecker is essentially a professional bomber--but is he merely a criminal (terrorist?)or an outlaw (freedom fighter?)? There are Arabs as major characters--all in a state of internecine hostility. And the symbolic hooey--and there's plenty of it here--is as New Age as New Age gets, even though it predates New Age by an eon.
I'd read the book years ago and recently reread it and found it as engaging, thought provoking and quirkily amusing as ever. It's not many novels that can be a contemporary masterpiece of different decades. So, though there are better Robbins books out there, I definitely think Still Life with Woodpecker is a "must read" even today.
Rating: 5
Summary: my all time favorite...
Comment: This is my absolute favorite book of all time. I have read this book over and over througout different points in my life. Each time I am able pull from it a new understanding. I have recommended this book to so many people over the years, and have gotten nothing but THANK YOUS!
Still Life touches on so many different topics with such simplicity, however the meaning and importance of each is immense. An example being something as simple as our relationship with inanimate objects, most of us take that for granted each day. Tom Robbins in his witty clever way compels the reader to appreciate his or her surroundings. Of course the love story. And the age old question of how to make love stay???
Even the finishing up in longhand is brilliant. I'd never give anything away, but this book by far has the best last line ever!
Enjoy!!
Rating: 4
Summary: Dazling sentences, lovely story, but what to do?
Comment: First off I have to let it be known that this is the only Tom Robbins novel that I have read, so I cannot compare "Still Life with Woodpecker" to other Tom Robbins works.
That being said I must also say that now having read a tom Robbins work I have to marvel at his fantastic smithing of words. Metaphors, similes, and visual allusions that are so creative and right to the point that can't help but make me read them over and over.
"Still Life with Woodpecker" is a tale of love. A redheaded deposed princess living with her deposed king and queen parents just outside of Seattle. Her search for love and meaning in the world while trying to save it from the horrors of destruction, all while falling in love with another red-head who finds purpose in blowing things up, constitute the center of this story. But in essence "Still Life with Woodpecker" is less of a story than it is a very long aside about the nature of things and emotions. At least in the end I felt that the plot, in its outrageous plausibility, along with none of the characters being totally worth sympathy, became just a little too much and I began to appreciate the book more for its wordsmithing and poignant insights, which are worth the read. Unfortunately Tom feels that in the end he has to explain what the book is all about. It would have been better to just let the reader figure that out I think.
Plus, being a red head myself, it was nice to know that I may be an inter-dimensional communicator to an exiled alien race. Good stuff.
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Title: Jitterbug Perfume by TOM ROBBINS ISBN: 0553348981 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 April, 1990 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins ISBN: 055334949X Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 April, 1990 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins ISBN: 0553349481 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 April, 1990 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins ISBN: 0553377884 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 November, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins ISBN: 0553377876 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 November, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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