I don’t typically review the books that I read aloud to my spouse each night. Typically, reading time lasts about 30 minutes, or around 10 pages. It all depends. In fact, we started Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins on December 19th and finished on March 22nd. That kind of timeline is not reviewer friendly.
However, Robbins’s work is so bizarre, but I feel like I have to say something. The novel begins by alternating with three characters in different locations: Priscilla, a waitress in Seattle who works on the perfect perfume at night in her apartment; the Le Fever family that owns a large perfume business in Paris; and Madame Devalier, Priscilla’s stepmother who owns a small perfume business in New Orleans. All three groups are trying to make the next big perfume, but none of them can seem to figure out what the bass note should be.
Robbins then takes us back into the past — Way before Christianity — to meet Alobar, a king who is not that old, but whose kingdom has the rule that once there is any sign of aging, including a single gray hair, the king must be killed so that an heir can take over. Alobar finagles away to pretend like he’s been killed so that he can escape, and throughout the novel, on his adventurous yet relaxing trek, he joins new societies, including one that teaches him a method for immortality.
You start to get the idea that the people who want to make the perfume in the present are looking for immortality. I think. I’m honestly not sure. Tom Robbins tends to be one of those authors who goes all over the place, and there’s sure to be a lot of sex involved, often with multiple partners at the same time. Robbins is pretty much the time captured on paper. Jitterbug Perfume was published in 1984, but it definitely has a ’70s vibe to it. If you’ve read Fear of Flying or Looking for Mr. Goodbar, the sexual scenes feel similarly graphic, freeing, and excessive. You start to get the feeling that all these characters want to do is have sex and see themselves as in tune with what their bodies want. In fact, I believe one whole section was two characters sitting in a hot tub, him waxing philosophical, her waxing his knob. I couldn’t help but feel like, at times, that I was staring at a monkey exhibit at the zoo.
What’s bizarre is that the entire novel is tied together by beets. Yes, the vegetable. At first, we have no clue what’s going on with beets, and why they keep showing up at the three locations mentioned above (Seattle, Paris, New Orleans). As the novel continues, Alobar meets his life mate, Kudra. A lot more sex ensues. Beets are mentioned throughout as a good food.
However, it was never clear to me exactly where this book was going, which can make it feel extremely long at 342 pages. The night on which I finished reading to Nick, we actually skimmed one section because it was yet another character who had left behind his philosophy on the types of brains that we have. It had very little to no relevance to the story, and we were fine with skimming.
Robbins is known for his sprawling casts, characters that don’t stay in one place, sexual content, and a trippy sort of psychedelic vibe. The sentences themselves are readable, but it may be the plot itself that trips you up if you don’t want to hang on. Anyway, when we finished, I was happy it was done.
what’s next?
It’s finally happening! I’m going to read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice cover to cover, out loud, to my spouse. Long-time readers know that I read to Nick nightly while he brushes my hair, so getting through a book is a slow process. Recently, I purchased a copy of Pride and Prejudice that is edited by Patricia Meyer Spacks, who includes side notes in her text, which include artwork to demonstrate what characters might own, ride in, etc., as well as money conversions and emphasis on why something that seems trivial to modern eyes was highly important. If you click HERE, you will find some images of the copy from which we will be reading.
Grab the Lapels 
I kind of want to read this, but I kind of don’t. 🙂
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There is no “kinda” with Tom Robbins, lol. If you’ve read him before, you know what you’re getting into in general.
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Well of course I am thrilled that you are reading P&P next. What a great project. It might take a little while to get into the rhythm of very different types of sentences but I do hope you do get into it, and enjoy the wit and irony of it all.
I have never read Tom Robbins. Someone once passed on to me Even cowgirls get the blues but I never did get around to reading it. Not sure why except that other books I wanted to read more kept getting in front of it. I did enjoy your discussion of this – and of Robbins in general – though.
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If you are interested at all, I would say read his memoir. It’s really funny and engaging, and then you get a sense of why he writes the way he does. Some of his books are just too much for some people, probably because they include a lot of sex in non-marital non-monogamous ways, which bothers some people. It doesn’t bother me, but there are always a ton of scenes. He recently died in 2025 at age 92. That man saw some things.
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I did read this, but I have no memory of it whatsoever. It’s got a 4.23 with over 80,000 ratings on Goodreads, which is pretty darn good!
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Which is weird because on The Storygraph people don’t seem to like it. A lot didn’t finish it. One person said she was really tired of the main character having sex with a minor? That wasn’t a thing…. The main character is immortal, and he meets his eventual wife when she’s a child, but basically she grows up to become the same age as him. There is no weird pedophilia.
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So much to unpack in this post. Beets. Sex. Nick brushes your hair???? That’s what I’m most interested in. How can I convince men to brush my hair because this sounds LOVELY
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Well, while he brushes, I read aloud to him, so maybe that is the exchange? I started reading aloud to him a long time ago, when I first got hearing aids because you have to practice hearing sounds, so they recommend reading aloud. Then, when my hair got really long and would make me angry because it would get so tangled, he offered to help–while I was reading. Now that I’m almost 41 and my hair is reacting to my age (HAHA, IT’S THINNING), first it’s brushing and then it’s oiling my scalp (and then I sleep in a bonnet). I have turned to the wisdom of Black women in an effort to save my hair.
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I love this. Should I wear a bonnet? My hair is very oily and thin. I don’t know if it’s thinning, but it’s always been thin
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My sister was big into Tom Robbins back in the 80s. I read a few of them and yeah, he’s totally bonkers and there is often no reason for it at all, so I quickly moved on.
Had no idea there is an annotated Pride and Prejudice! That’s kinda cool. I hope you and Nick both enjoy it! I will stick to my beloved mass market paperback I bought for English class in my senior year of high school and have marked up and read about 6 times now I think. The cover is barely hanging on and I think I will need to deploy some tape the next time I read it.
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Some of the notes are simple, like defining a word that readers might not know, but other times it defines a word that you do think you know but was used differently in Austen’s time, so while modern readers think it means A, it really means B. I was also fascinated by the explanation of Elizabeth basically calling the group a bunch of cows at one point. It’s a reference to a famous artist.
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I never guessed that Jitterbug Perfume had anything to do with actual perfume. This sounds about as weird as I imagined it to be and I am confirmed in being fine to skip his work entirely. I also read aloud most nights and it’s something I look forward to every day.
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For the first hundred pages or so I didn’t know this was about perfume myself! Tom Robbins just goes wherever the weed takes him, I swear. I think I’ve convinced a few other people to try reading out loud, though I know you are one of those folks who already did it before. If you are interested in the hippy dippy whatever that Tom Robbins is, most people start with Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.
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