Robbins’s style of writing may have been slightly more prevalent in the ’60s, when the likes of Tom Wolfe, Ken Kesey and Kurt Vonnegut were at the top of their respective games, but now, these latter-day great thinkers have been replaced on bookstore shelves by yet another written-in-his-sleep “thriller” from James Patterson. Robbins’s patience and preciseness - not to mention his unique perspective - is exactly why the world needs him and his wildly elaborate tales.

Robbins takes every literary cliché that comes his way and twists it into something so extraordinary, so rare, that it’s no surprise the man reputedly takes 10 minutes to write a single sentence. Nothing is even simple and nothing is ever normal. Tanuki’s affair with a Japanese farm-girl sets in motion this story of philosophy-spewing American MIA soldiers, a famed traveling circus, an Autumn-loving romantic and her clown-obsessed sister, a drug-smuggling priest, and the most death-defying high-wire act you’ve ever seen. In this case, it’s Tanuki - a Japanese badger-like creature with a scrotum like a hot-air balloon, shape-shifting abilities and penchant for sake. The book begins where so many of Robbins’s tales do - with the introduction of a character to eventually become the story’s centerpiece. Robbins’s latest novel, Villa Incognito continues this tradition, taking an odd groups of characters and throwing them into a situation that on the surface might seem entirely implausible, but when told with Robbins’s delicate and deliberate phrasing and exquisite character development, suddenly feels not only believable, but somewhat familiar as well. To him, it’s what makes the great race so darn interesting. Be it from the point of view of a lusty spoon or perhaps a lowly cigarette box, altered perspective is something else on which Robbins’s particular style of writing thrives. From phallic-fingered heroine Sissy Hackshaw in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues to modern-day Jezebel Ellen-Cherry in Skinny Legs and All, Robbins’s ability to build exotic and out-there tales around the oldest and most exciting of human pursuits leads readers down tracks so familiar yet so utterly absurd, with the author taking what we know about love, passion and fidelity, and jerking it ever so slightly to remind us just how enjoyable it is to look at life from a whole other position.

Villa Incognito by Tom Robbins