Everything and everyone is connected, and what at first might seem like happenstance, turns out to be another fork in the road. You have to trust that the loose ends will be tied up eventually, and it is worth the wait. The plot jumps back and forth without being overly confusing. He is well-versed in current events, mythology, philosophy, and pop culture. He doesn't explain every detail immediately, and let's the pieces fall into place as the reader moves along. He writes as if you were having a direct conversation with him and not just merely reading a novel. He is creative without being unbelievable. Robbins is one of those rare authors where I stop for a second and think, how the hell did he come up with this?! Well, Tom Robbins did not make up the story of the tanuki from scratch, but he did embellish on the Japanese legend.

Then, much to my surprise, he said I read a book about tanukis and I thought they were made up by the author. He looked at me strangely, so I spelled tanuki out for him. This book came to me because the recommender asked what that funny statue was in my living room. The problem is that it is empty where it is trying to be full, leaving the reader, in the end, feeling likewise. In honesty, it is a novel worth reading, if you like these kind of novels, because it is funny and because it is fun (I enjoyed it all of the way through). As it is, these unanswered mysteries are simply just things that happen. Coincidence is fine when it brings to a head a point or a revelation of character, but herein there is coincidence simply to move things forward (the greatest sin there is), and while a mystic refusal to answer questions can create a sense of deeper intellectual exploration, here it is simply a refusal to ask or answer the questions that could have been posed.

Here things mostly just happen, largely to characters that end up not mattering at all, almost entirely for reasons that are arbitrary. Gone from this novel is the depth of characterization and the complexity of the absurdity of the situations.

I found myself agreeing with all of his views and disagreeing with nearly all of the ways that he said things.

The problem is that the characterizations, even for parody, even for humor, are flat and contrived, the philosophy espoused is pedestrian, even for a college freshman (seriously, can't people just get over their realizations that Columbus didn't 'discover' the Americas? Is it really so profound that you have been told a lie of fact even as you are being told a truth of consequences?), and the political commentary is so incensed that it lies down on the traintracks of talking head babble. It is very funny, with lots of excellent lines and clever little observations. This is probably the worst Tom Robbins I've ever read.

Villa incognito by tom robbins