Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins - Book Review: School Edition!
Hello, everyone! I'm back, and I'm here to review Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins. This is one of the novels that I'm reading for my America in Revolt literature class. It contains a motley crew of characters that find themselves in philosophic debate and in possession of a rather important spiritual "artifact." But enough about that. Let's get onto the review.
Guys, when I began reading this novel, I was really enjoying it. From the very beginning you get an idea of how the book is going to go. You have characters with ridiculous but very interesting background and points of view. The sequence of events is not told through a linear order, and the main plot of the story was often interrupted with philosophic debate that didn't ever end in a winner. But if you think about it, that's usually how philosophic debates typically end up.
But back to the point, I was really enjoying the novel. The symbolism was crazy yet still made sense with a little bit of humor. I was even interested in each little debate that they had. I felt like each one was important in its own way, and it made me think about aspects of my life differently. Sure, it may have been a little weird, but I was still ready to give this book four out of five for a rating.
But then I read the ending.
Everything was going so well, and most of it made sense. Then the ending happened. It just sucked all the life out of me, and maybe that's what supposed to happen. But I can honestly say that the ending was not at all satisfying for me. The way things went down for the last fifty or so pages was just not at all inspiring as the other parts of the novel. Again, maybe it's another nod to dying religions, but that doesn't make me want to read it again!
What does make me want to read this book again is the characters! They're all so different and interesting and weird, and I love them each for different reasons. Amanda goes against many gender sterotypes that ran rampant in the seventies (and now). John Paul is so centered and zen but still a man of action. Marx Marvelous went against everything he knew, twice, and is still searching for the truth. Plucky is like a giant teddy bear who believes in justice and women, and he's not apologetic about either. All of these people come together, and they live, love, and deal with some very strange situations. But I wouldn't be mad reading more about them.
So with everything said and done, I'm giving this book three and a half morel mushrooms out of five.
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