Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

October 30, 1995
Robbins's latest tells of a Seattle commodities broker whose life is abruptly changed by a wild weekend with a handful of eccentrics.

June 15, 1994
This latest from Robbins, whose ability to "mix tomfoolery and philosophy" is unparalleled (Skinny Legs and All, LJ 3/1/90), will surely be high on patrons' wish lists this fall. Five previous novels by the wacky but literate writer have sold more than four million copies.

August 1, 1994
This is an extraordinarily funny novel. At first it seems gimmicky. Robbins assumes the voice--the entire persona, in fact--of a 29-year-old Filipino woman by the name of Gwen Mati, a Seattle stockbroker, who must re-assess her material and psychological resources over the course of one weekend following a Black Thursday on the stock market. But soon we fall, hook, line, and sinker into her plight; the yarn has a genuineness, a warmth, a humor, and an incredibly compelling plot, which hold our attention to the end. So, anyway, the stock market has taken a nosedive, and even though brokers themselves aren't nose-diving out of windows, there is concern in the Seattle financial community about how to repair portfolios and reputations. In the midst of this grave concern, Gwen has a Thursday-evening-to-Monday-morning lesson in the weird side of sex and the puzzlement of love. Gwen's unwitting adventures during a weekend when she needs to be concentrating on emotional repair lead her from pillar to post and one strange character to another. Robbins' style is a knockout--"How typical of your luck that when you finally arrived in a position to poach your golden eggs, the goose had a hysterectomy"--and the pace is unrelenting; but most important of all, you come to love Gwen. ((Reviewed August 1994))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1994, American Library Association.)

August 1, 1994
Robbins (Skinny Legs and All; Even Cowgirls Get the Blues) begins this disappointing novel just before Easter weekend, as commodities broker Gwen Mati-half-Filipina, half-Irish-is in her favorite Seattle bar, mourning the stock market's nosedive. A devout materialist, Gwen is concerned that an honest-to-goodness crash might expose some of her less-than-ethical maneuvers. By the time the market opens again on Monday, however, her life will be altered in ways she can't imagine. Among those promoting the changes are an obese spiritualist named ``Q-Jo,'' a pizzazzy character who exits too soon from the story; Larry Diamond, Robbins's requisite mystery man on a bike; and Andre, Europe's most notorious simian jewel thief. Devotees of the serious should avoid Robbins-this volume, for instance, contains discussions about extraterrestrials who take the form of amphibious humanoids and about the effect of eating asparagus on a person's urine. All of this is, for Robbins anyway, fairly safe territory-a quirky female protagonist undergoing life changes at the last minute-but something goes wrong here. The biggest problem may be Gwen herself: an unpleasant character, she's greedy, manipulative and without a trace of remorse. Though Robbins, who narrates to Gwen in the second person, can still put together clever turns-of-phrase (``Tim-buk-tu. One of the phonetic wonders of the world''; ``haughty as an unpaired chopstick''), he seems unable to distinguish details and characters worth hanging a plot on from those best discarded.

September 15, 1994
Robbins offers a wild and wacky trip featuring, among other things, a stock market crash and various philosophies about meaning and the origins of cultures. Gwen, an endangered stockbroker, is involved with strait-laced Belford and his born-again monkey. When she is attracted to Larry-who has cancer and is currently between trips to Timbuktu-she must choose among the American dream, the Timbuktu alternate, and something else. The book is a whirlwind of mad incidents, semiprofound observations, and an endless supply of great lines. The author of Skinny Legs and All (LJ 3/1/90) has come up with a very funny book that might incite a bit of thinking as well as laughter. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/94.]-Robert H. Donahugh, formerly with Youngstown & Mahoning Cty. P.L., Ohio