Even Cowgirls Get The Blues – Tom Robbins (1976)
NUMBER: 86
Genre: Fiction; Origin: USA; Pages: 350
Satisfaction rating: 8.0
OVERVIEW:
Starring: Sissy Hanshaw - flawlessly beautiful, almost. A small-town girl with big-time dreams and a quirk to match: hitchhiking her way into your heart, your hopes, and your sleeping bags. Featuring: Bonanza Jellybean and the smooth-riding cowgirls of Rubber Rose Ranch; Chink, lascivious guru of yams and yang; Julian, Mohawk by birth - asthmatic esthete and husband by disposition; Dr. Robbins, preventive psychiatrist and reality instructor. Follow Sissy’s amazing odyssey from Virginia to chic Manhattan to the Dakota Badlands, where FBI agents, cowgirls, and ecstatic whooping cranes explode in a deliciously drawn-out climax.
MATTHEW’S COMMENTS:
You have to hold on tight to the reigns of this book. Pulling together mysticism, spirituality, psychoanalysis and American counter-culture, Tom Robbins throws 121 chapters at the reader, an even mix of paragraphs that dazzle and daunt. It is always engaging and thoroughly entertaining, if still somewhat confusing.
I’m not suggesting the plot is confusing. His development of weird and wonderful characters never falters, rather it is the dense themes of feminism, oppression and enlightenment that I found hard to keep step with. As this takes over much of the second half of the book I found myself rereading passages to decipher the intended message. Ultimately, I sat back and enjoyed the ride and in doing so felt less laboured, I suppose Robbins provides room to move in his themes as to allow each reader to find a range of meaning. Similar, in some respects, to Murakami’s surreal work, albeit much darker subject matter on Murakami’s behalf.
Never did Robbins entertain more than in Part 1 of the novel. Here he builds a fascinating picture of Sissy, and her thumbs. Like a fisherman, Robbins casts the line deep into the water and slowly reels it in, his chapters explore vast tangents and most are controlled enough to return to a point and progress the story and our understanding Sissy’s alienation.
Last word must be saved for the final page of the book, not listed as a chapter but as a ’special bonus parable’. Despite the loose ends of the book being pulled together a little quickly for my liking it is this final section that offers the most satisfying end, indeed it is “swee-eet”.
FURTHER REFERENCES:
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