Chestnut blossoms, weary from having been admired all day, wore faint smiles of anticipation. Pompadours of supper-time smoke billowed from chimneys, separating into girlish pigtails as the breeze combed them out, above the slate rooftops.

()Ī few flat clouds folded themselves like crepes over fillings of apricot sky. The sun was so round and glossy and black that had it a figure eight on it, well, it would have validated a lot of long-standing philosophical and theological complaints, underlining once and for all just where we earthlings sit on the cosmic pool table. When Claude glanced at the sky, he saw that the text of Les Miserables had been painted over by Salvador Dali. With the absence of the cloud cover that normally caused the sky over Seattle to resemble cottage cheese that had been dragged nine miles behind a cement truck, the city, for the first time in memory, would have an unobstructed view of one of nature’s most mystical spectacles. The sky was a velvety black paw pressing on the white landscape with a feline delicacy, stars flying like sparks from its fur. The sky, layered with thin altostratus clouds and smog, appeared to reflect human suffering and failed to awaken in Claude visions of paradise. And here’s the kind of prose you can look forward to: Here’s what seems to pass for humor in a Tom Robbins novel: beets (the very existence of), a woman getting stung in a delicate place by a bee, and lesbians (the very existence of). People have recommended him on the basis of comparisons to Douglas Adams, but Adams is, you know, funny. Well, I officially don’t get Tom Robbins.

Jitterbug perfume cover