Synopses & Reviews
Now in paperback, internationally bestselling novelist and American icon Tom Robbins's long-awaited tale of his wild life and times, at home and around the globe.
Tom Robbins's warm, wise, and wonderfully weird novels — including Still Life With Woodpecker, Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, and Jitterbug Perfume — provide an entryway into the frontier of his singular imagination. Madcap but sincere, with strong social and philosophical undercurrents, his irreverent classics have introduced countless readers to born-again monkeys, a philosophizing can of beans, exiled royalty, and problematic redheads.
In Tibetan Peach Pie, Robbins turns that unparalleled literary sensibility inward, weaving together stories of his unconventional life — from his Appalachian childhood to his globe-trotting adventures — told in his unique voice that combines the sweet and sly, the spiritual and earthy. The grandchild of Baptist preachers, Robbins would eventually become a poet interruptus, an air force weatherman, a radio DJ, an art-critic-turned-psychedelic-journeyman, a world-famous novelist, and a counterculture hero, leading a life as magical and as bizarre as those of his quixotic characters.
Robbins offers intimate snapshots of Appalachia during the Great Depression, the West Coast during the sixties' psychedelic revolution, international roving before Homeland Security monitored our travels, and New York publishing when it still relied on trees. Written with the big-hearted comedy and mesmerizing linguistic invention for which Robbins is known, Tibetan Peach Pie is an invitation into the private world of a literary legend.
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“Robbins continues to embody Zen coolness and bohemian charm.” Booklist (starred review)
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“Robbins carries us along a magical wonder tour in this high-flying, Zen koan-like, and cinematic tour of some of the episodes in his journey through space and time.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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“[Readers] will enjoy this peek into the intelligently goofy and always fertile mind of this inventive writer...a fitting cap to a sui generis career, equally satisfying in short installments or read straight through.” Kirkus Reviews
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“Memoir or not, the form suits Robbins's digressive style, philosophical musings, and self-deprecating humor. Each piece stands on its own, but when read side by side they develop into a powerful argument about magic and the necessity of imaginative, interior worlds.” Library Journal (starred review)
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“Perhaps the only aspect more impressive than Robbins's ability to imbue a lifetime of interesting anecdotes with an additional layer of introspection is his trademark style [...]earthy and conversational yet simultaneously intellectual. Fans and newcomers alike will guffaw and marvel at this most extraordinary life Shelf Awareness
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“[Tibetan Peach Pie] bursts with enough joie de vivre to bewitch even the most present-shock-imprisoned 28-year-old and to snag the rest of us with Robbins far-out, feel-good sensibility and trademark helical, world-happy prose.” Elle
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“Tibetan Peach Pie is a late, welcome gift from a philosopher-novelist who continues to believe in the transformative qualities of ‘novelty, beauty, mischief and mirth — qualities apparent on every page of this lively, large-hearted book.” Washington Post
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“Tibetan Peach Pie is a gift to his fans, the story of a man who had the sense to follow where his imagination led.…How lucky for his readers that we got to tag along for the ride.” Seattle Times
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“The author of such off-kilter bestsellers as Still Life with Woodpecker has written a rollicking reminiscence of his Appalachian upbringing, his spiral through the psychedelic ‘60s, and his unconventional path to literary stardom.” O magazine
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“Beautiful...Robbins has never met a pun, a blissfully crooked analogy, a magicians bit of verbal trickery that he didn't love.…He knows words the way a pool hustler knows chalk.” NPR Books (Online Review)
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“Wacky, wonder-filled… The fiction master of our times, Thomas Pynchon, once called Robbins a brain-dazzling ‘world-class storyteller. Now in his 80s, he still is, even in telling his own story.” USA Today (Online Review)
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“Robbins is king of the sidewinder simile, the mixologists metaphor. No other popular writer of our time depends as he does on pure verbal dazzle, or delivers as reliably on the deal.” Seattle Weekly
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“For the lover of words and wordplay, humor, and creative and high flying imagination, there is no contemporary writer any better.” San Francisco Book Review
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“At his best, Robbins writes prose that flows like hes having a blast putting it all down as fast as he can think it.” Houston Chronicle
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“Tibetan Peach Pie is vintage Robbins. Its pyrotechnic in language, labyrinthine in logic, daunting in voice, threaded with his wonderfully esoteric wit.…Authentically charming…profound.” Washington Independent Review of Books
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“Readers will enjoy immersing themselves in [Robbins] adventuresome life, from his remarkably unsupervised childhood to his free and easy adulthood. Tibetan Peach Pie…is a welcome antidote to our current era of helicopter parenting and disciplined conformity and rules, rules, rules.” Richmond Times-Dispatch
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“Fans of Tom Robbins, the person, the novelist, the introspective jokester and the gifted storyteller, will love this book. It truly is a gem.” Portland Book Review
About the Author
Tom Robbins was born in North Carolina in 1932 and raised in Virginia. A graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, he moved to Seattle to do graduate work at the University of Washington. His internationally bestselling works include Still Life With Woodpecker, Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, Jitterbug Perfume, Skinny Legs and All, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, Villa Incognito, and B Is For Beer. Robbins lives with his wife, Alexa D'Avalon, and their dog, Blini Tomato Titanium, in Washington State.