Robbins has a superfluous way of describing the mundane.

The main character ("you") is an incredibly boring junior stockbroker and pretty much has no redeeming human qualities, other than having "the cutest piece of ass in Seattle."

There is not much of a plot. "You" run into an ex-stockbroker, Larry, and he goes into a rant of the Nommo.

Again, it's mostly colourful language and "you" have some very normal sex. With the exception of Larry, I have no sympathy for any of the characters. Only because Larry is ill.

This book is a terrible bore. No plot, no character development. The language is irritating.

Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for Tom anymore, but I put this down about half-way through and, despite repeated attempts, just never managed to pick it back up again. Something about the story was just too much of a stretch; the main character just too unidentifiable, etc. Everything was just a bit too... Robbins-esque, like too much sugar in your coffee or too much mint in your julep. Just couldn't finish it. I mean, I could, but it's just easier to order another coffee....

Separate from my myriad secret addictions was my very public addiction to Tom Robbins books. When I was diagnosed with cancer in 1996, I called my mother. I said, "I have cancer." She paused briefly and then said, "I know what you need. You need a new Tom Robbins' novel."

I cannot claim conclusively that Tom Robbins' writing can cure cancer, but here I am free since 1997.

That's all I'm saying.

And I got that book signed, too.

I really enjoyed Jitterbug Perfume so was excited to pick up Half Asleep in Frog Pajama. I was disappointed with the social commentary. I chalk it up to it was just a different time. The critiques that consumerism-is-alienating and wall-street-is-untethered-to-reality was probably novel back then but now those are simply a tiktok meme. Maybe these ideas were so novel back in 1994 that readers could overlook the latent bigotry (misogyny, racism, classism, fat phobia, exoticism) but it made me uncomfortable not in a challenging way but in a “rich guy tries to quit the rat race and join some exotic counter culture” way.
Im open to the “different times” arguments because surely in 30 years my thoughts will be more mature. At the same time, empathy is empathy. I guess what I’m saying is novels like these age poorly. Novels where the Fool sports a shit eating grin while explaining how society and all those participating in it are the Real Fools. My biggest pet peeve is self-confident ignorance usually because it’s the easiest way to cover up when someone is bullshitting.
The technical problem is that as time passes and society progresses, we better understand the way society works and that ignorance of the absurdity of life (the material of the Fool) recedes. Meaning the once all powerful Fool loses his crown as the all knowing holder of secret knowledge. This leads to his shtick becoming boring and condescending.

You got frogs, you got stars, you got some of the most descriptive recounts of fluid exchange that I’ve ever read. Hooo!

Set in Seattle and published in 1994 but no mention of Nirvana? Damn Tom, okay!

Can an author with a goatee write in second person (that’s right, second person – Tom’s driving from the passenger seat like the ghost that made me crunch mum’s car while I parked) with enough skill to make me feel that I am the protagonist? I’m not sure. I sort of feel like ol’ Tom is somehow flirting with the reader. It’s a slightly grubby technique especially when we’re asked to inhibit the form of Filipino woman. I don’t know man.

However, that aside and acknowledged – this book still ripsssss, even more so if your desk drawer is equal parts Mad Magazine, incense and crude drawings of coupling. Squares and people with moral compasses shouldn’t read this and should stick to eating chicken breast.

Still may favorite Robbins. Written in second person perspective, which really suits his style, and from the view of a business woman looking to make her career. Hilarious, as always.

There has always been a little debate about the best "person" to use when writing a novel. Some authors swear by the first person (I) some by the third person (she/he). Tom Robbins sidesteps the whole issue but using the second person (you). And it isn't the universal "you" you find in this sentence or in HOW TO manuals (first you grab each end of the shoelaces.) This YOU is someone else entirely. Fortunately, you find out soon enough that the YOU Robbins is talking to in his novel, is a very pretty, twenty-nine-year-old stock broker from Settle, who has a hell of a libido and some extremely strange friends. She's of Filipino/Welsh descent and has the kind of breathy voice that prevents anyone from taking her seriously. ("If a box of Hostess Twinkies could talk, they'd have your voice.")

So, YOU, Gwendolyn Mattie, on the Easter Weekend following the worst day of your life, have lured many of your clients into some very bad investments just before the terrible market crash. That nice, big-money career you planned for yourself, which already includes a new Porsche, lots of expensive clothes, and a pending lease on an exclusive apartment, is in danger of slipping away. So too is your relationship with your handsome though boringly Lutheran boyfriend. He is obsessed with Andre, a pet monkey he has saved from execution in France where the monkey has been arrested for grand theft. After all, a master theft trained and used Andre to steal expensive jewelry. Yikes!

In the middle of this Easter Weekend disaster, you Gwendolyn run into Larry Diamond, an ex-stockbroker who has left the biz to find "The Truth" in Timbuktu. He's trying hard to seduce you, and when he finally does, you experience an orgasm that the author describes almost as uniquely and spectacularly as he does the Seattle rain.

Can you leverage your good looks, your growing relationship with Diamond, the talents of Andre, a strange deck of tarot cards, and even the mysteries of Timbuktu to save your career? That's a great big maybe, Gwen.

Bottom line: this essay on spirituality, the stock market, and the weather in the Pacific Northwest is damn funny, full of wisdom and metaphors that are as fast moving and entertaining as a series of exceptional card tricks. Gwendolyn is enticing and intriguing, Andre is a kick, Diamond, though (when he isn't putting it to Gwen) can be quite boring as he drones on and on about the Dog Star, interstellar intelligence, the BOZO, and Timbuktu. Four Stars, in spite of its brilliance, for all those pages of over-ripe philosophy

A half-filippina wannabe stockmarket hotshot, a born-again macaque (monkey) which belongs to your serious Christian boyfriend, an ex-stockmarket whizz turned burned-out rocker, a tarot reader friend the size of Jabba the Hut who goes missing, the Safe Sex Rapist - these are just some of the unforgettable crazy characters in Tom Robbins's novel Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas.

Written in the mid-90s when Japan's immense real-estate bubble was just beginning to plummet and enter the meltdown stage, and the 'greed is good' creed of Wall Street etc. was starting to become passe, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (a comical passing reference to mankind who has evolved from amphibious states) is a real, classic and witty Robbins romper-stomper.

As usual, this book will make you laugh out loud, make you feel slightly horny when you read the juicy sections and have you scratching your head at the esoteric perplexing references that Robbins slips in here and there. Robbins' erudition is both his charm and partly his flaw - if you get his references, they are truly highlights of the book but if they fall on dear ears (as they occasionally do on this lay reader with a poor general knowledge) then this is where the 'I don't get Tom Robbins' clique comes into play.

This is basically a story of transformation about a young trendsetter wannabe financial advisor hotshot, Gwendolyn, who after thinking she has lost it all when the stocks go south, discovers a new person, Larry Diamond, who not only brings new zest to her increasingly dissolute life but manages to change her perspective on life and what is really important.

The problem is Gwendolyn has a Christian sweetheart boyfriend who is too nice to be true and on top of that his slightly unruly macaque/monkey pet who has an incorrigible sweet-tooth for banana popsicles and has run amok through the town. Gwen has to choose between Belford, her Christian boyfriend, or Larry - the new, intelligent but deeply mysterious person in her life who may or may not, as an ex-trader himself, hold the keys to her own blazing return to the financial scene.

Won't spoil the fun for you anymore. Just get it and read it. Tom Robbins' writing is unforgettable - it is witty, intelligent, at times thigh-slappingly hilarious with a dash of lasciviousness added to the mix. Thank you once again to Larry for lending me his copy of this great book! Highly recommended.

This is a book about frogs and aliens. The book does not contain a single frog or alien.
There is a failed stock trader and a kooky mystic with all the real answers. Both these characters are thin vehicles for Tom to rant at you about some weird stuff he read. There are some other characters who are even thinner. They don't matter.

The whole novel can be summed up in a quote from one of those nothing side characters.
When questioned by reporters about his failings, Dr Yamaguchi replies that he can't help who he is, "I sweet potato what I sweet potato".
There's no reason for this character to be misquoting Popeye. It doesn't mean anything. It's just some nonsense Tom didn't cut. He couldn't. If non-sequiturs of that caliber had to go, then the whole novel would be headed for the trash.

This book would have been much shorter (and more honest) if it had just been kooky rants, in the vein of something like "Our Mysterious Spaceship Moon." Instead, the characters monologue at each other about absolute nonsense, while driving madly between the same three locations over and over again.

I feel like I was all set up to like this book, too.
I started reading this book at 16:00 on Easter Thursday, exactly when the book begins.
I have rad hand tattoos, just like the Diamond character.
This book was given to me by my boss. It's his favourite book. I think it's pretty funny that its a book about quitting your job.

3.5 stars

Tom Robbins’ prose and plots are outrageous … it was very funny at times and as witty as I’ve ever read. Doesn’t hold a candle to Skinny Legs and All for me.

Tom Robbins is my favorite author and has been for a long time, but I'm almost ashamed to admit that I hadn't read Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas until now. I think it's because I've not yet read a Robbins book I didn't like so I didn't feel pressured to read it. I'm glad I moved it to the top of my pile though, as the head trip that comprised the story was definitely worth exploring.

Tom Robbins is not an author to read if you need your books to start at point A and end at point Z and progress in a logical and linear fashion with no tangents, tightly packaged and locked in, following a standard formula and complete with a happily ever after. These things are all well and good but are not present in a Tom Robbins novel.

Reading his work is a lot like using the spin the bottle method of picking turns on a road trip. You don't know where you'll end up and backtracking is almost out of the question, but somehow, some way, you end up where you wanted to go. Or maybe you don't; maybe you end up somewhere totally different that you've never heard of or thought about and that's just fine too.

It's so hard to talk about what goes in the story because everything is tied into everything else- the cast of characters is outrageous, the storylines are a big, knotty, candy-covered puzzle, and through it all run themes that are still as relevant today as they were when the book first came out. It's a book to read in segments and to think about between readings; with that said, it's easy to get sucked in and read it all in one go.

Overall Grade A, if grading this kind of book is even really possible.

Read more reviews at What Book is That?

Yes! Another fantastical literary trip from Tom Robbins!

Seattle stockbroker Gwen Mati feels as though her life is falling apart when all of a sudden the stock market takes a turn for the worse on the Thursday before Easter. To add insult to injury, her psychic friend goes missing just as a strange and inappropriate character is thrown into her life. To top it all off, she's fallen carelessly into an unwanted relationship that has yeilded nothing more than a search for her 'lovers' lost monkey!

To resolve all this in the course of a weekend would only be possible through the whimsical storytelling of Tom Robbins!

Written in the second person, present tense (or so I'm told by Wikipedia), 'HAIFP' draws the reader in, refering to 'you' as the main character. As with all of Robbins' books that I've read, the joy is not in the story itself necessarily but in the colorfully lyrical text. No description is put forth without wild analogies and vibrantly unexpected language making each line an absolute pleasure to read.

Somewhere in between a story about a jade-cancer-curing-enema-pump and African mythology, Robbins manages to throw in a bit of a moral if you will as the main character, Gwen, must fight between the (relative) 'security' of her job in the world of finance, and the whimsical 'do as you please' philosophy put forth by her new friend, Larry Diamond. With Robbins at the helm, it's not hard to guess which she, or 'you,' as the story is told, will choose!

Enjoy the trip!