I admit up front a bias, a sheer and uncontrollable infatuation with Tom Robbins' books. Jitterbug Perfume had me obsessed with beets and circular breathing. Still Life with Woodpecker made me long to die my hair and smoke Camel cigarettes while dreaming of pyramid adventures. And perhaps my favorite of all time, Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, awakened the desire to travel deep into rainforests, experiment with mind-opening psychotropic substances, and walk on stilts around a desert oasis nunnery while making jokes about papayas.

Villa Incognito too has its charms, full of intriguing descriptions of Bangkok, the wiles of tanukis and foxes, the longing to expatriate to get some perspective, and the beautiful glamour of aerialists in the circus. Alas, it did not sway my stance on mayonnaise one ioda, nor did it make me want to revisit clownish obsessions or start describing seasons with cutesy emotions.

 In a nutshell, it recounts the story of three Vietnam MIAs rebuilding a life under the radar in Laos--their bonds and rifts, their adventures and loves, and the heavy burden of trying to opt out of a political structure into which you're born without the opportunity to choose. The other underlying piece of the tale is that of the otherworldly animal spirits, a pandemonium of gods and goddesses for everything imaginable, mischief and interspecies breeding, and the love of sake.

There are still some things left unresolved... and I wouldn't expect differently from a Robbins... so much of the climax of the story feels stolen, a mix of relief and sadness and tension, and it leaves my mind to wander to possible futures (large nut-sacked badgers included). I find a reborn desire to escape and study and choose my own path instead of following the societal norm (funny, that happens a lot with these books). And maybe I want to plant a chrysanthemum seed in my palette and see if it will grow. Or, maybe not...

In any case, there are parts of this book that I found a little to trite or hollow-silly, like an impression of Robbins wit that didn't quite hit. Living in Seattle, I'm always a little excited by mentions of grounds that I do indeed stomp, and at the same time, it always feels a wee bit too contrived (then again, maybe any readers in Laos feel the same way hearing their village towns and political structure described?). There are still passages of insightful musing and interchanges that really sum up the underlying problems of humanity. Here's one of my favorites from early on in the book, where Kitsune the fox scolds Tanuki for having been truthful with humans about his appearance/journey from the Other world:

"How could you be so naive as to hell a human being the truth? Men live by embedding themselves in ongoing systems of illusion. Religion. Patriotism. Economics. Fashion. That sort of thing. If you wish to gain the favor of the two-legged ilk, you must learn to fabricate as wholeheartedly as they do. Actually, by sabotaging their static illusions, we can sometimes help turn their stale deceptions into fresh possibilities for their race, but that's probably a mission you're neither interested in nor suited for..."

Static illusions indeed. I'm going naked from now on.