Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins

Product Description

Starring Sissy Hanshaw--flawlessly beautiful, almost. A small-town girl with big-time dreams and a quirk to match--hitchhiking her way into your heart, your hopes, and your sleeping bags...

Featuring Bonanza Jellybean and the smooth-riding cowgirls of Rubber Rose Ranch. Chink, lascivious guru of yams and yang. Julian, Mohawk by birth; asthmatic esthete and husband by disposition. Dr. Robbins, preventive psychiatrist and reality instructor...

Follow Sissy's amazing odyssey from Virginia to chic Manhattan to the Dakota Badlands, where FBI agents, cowgirls, and ecstatic whooping cranes explode in a deliciously drawn-out climax...
Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #85013 in Books
Published on: 1990-04-01
Released on: 1990-04-01
Number of items: 1
Binding: Paperback
384 pages
Editorial Reviews

From AudioFile
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues is perhaps the ultimate love story. In the hands of master author Tom Robbins, love is found throughout the book; all its main characters devoutly believe in or eventually achieve love's magic. But it is the heroine, Sissy Hawkshaw, for whom love is always present in two distinct forms. With Michael Nouri's narration, Robbins's intelligently wacky credo of love is as wild a success as the last flock of whooping cranes found in the novel. Nouri's decision not to soften his voice for Sissy's lines is an interesting choice (as many male readers do to portray females). There are soft moments in the story, which he reads appropriately, but all in all, Sissy's voice is his own. The result is a smooth, all-encompassing reading that allows listeners to be fully absorbed. Many characters have a vital influence in this novel, and Michael Nouri does a superb job bringing each to life without straying too far from his own personal voice. Listeners couldn't ask for a better guide through Tom Robbins's adventures in love. R.A.P (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Review
"This is one of those special novels--a piece of working magic, warm, funny, and san--that you just want to ride off into the sunset with."--Thomas Pynchon

"The best fiction, so far, to come out of the American counterculture."--Chicago Tribune Book World

Review
"This is one of those special novels--a piece of working magic, warm, funny, and san--that you just want to ride off into the sunset with."--Thomas Pynchon

"The best fiction, so far, to come out of the American counterculture."--Chicago Tribune Book World
Customer Reviews

Not Free SF Reader
This is more of Robbins' whacky silliness, with a woman touring all over the place to find someone compatible and display her jeans to best advantage.

She ends up encountering other odd characters in her quest to find out where she fits in, and what this shagging thing is all about.



on and on and on and on
I got this book because it was highly recommended by a college professor. I thought that it was entirely too wordy. I would skip through paragraphs because it was just too much. I thought the story plot was interesting and could have been fun to read, but Tom Robbins came off sounding pretentious because of his overuse of words. It could have been much better.

Form over Function
The language is beautiful in form. Inspirational is the best way to describe his ability to describe any one moment. The internal mechanisms that move a story from one moment to the next is what was painfully absent. The main driving force of plot was overt sexual tension. Once this aspect had reached its climax early in the novel there was little holding my attention. I put the book down not knowing what became of the Chink or any of the Cowgirls.
Is literature supposed to have a point or not? There are works of art that are beauty in of themselves, and only for themselves, and represent a voice that was never heard of before. Then there are pieces of art and literature whose point is to edify through illustration, explanation or even catharis. This work was absent of any meaningful satire that I could discern. Robbin's strength here was in his unique way of illustrating with words.
I believe an earlier reviewer used the words "literary masturbation." Perfect discription.
Sadly, this was my first exposure to T. Robbins. Doubt if I will try again any time soon. I do get Cinemax afterall.