Robin Anderson Author Reviews

6+6+6
Eighteen Tales of Textual Titillation
Volume One

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

"Scrotumtious - a play on the words scrotum and scrumptious."
Grady Harp - Amazon

Robin Anderson continues to write the campiest tales that take on hilarious proportions that further into
the novel the reader progresses. His writing is risqué, full of parodies and putdowns, brimming over with
naughty situations that never approach pornography. He is an apt storyteller, but in so many ways his
stories are not as important as the zany characters he creates to unfold his bizarre ventures. At times his
writing seems like a Dr. Seuss tale written for adults with human characters instead of Seuss characters: if Horton Hears a Who then Robinson hears a Hoot! He takes a million and one chances in this stingingly funny selection of stories and his writing style is so adept that he knows exactly how to balance camp with storyline. A little background: Anderson was born in Scotland and educated in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, and South Africa and while his novels have a decidedly bent twist, is day job is that of an internationally respected interior designer. And in that field he likely has encountered much of the classy fodder he molds into this book.

In this latest release – 6 + 6 + 6 – he offers (add them up) 18 stories based on (or instigated by) famous books or characters or historical figures – touchstones for some of his funniest writing to date. Stick this little book in your briefcase (or purse) and pleasure your self with RA whenever life gets a bit tepid. A few titles to tantalize – ‘The Picture of Dorian Gay’, ‘Monsieur Bovary’, ‘Mary Poppins is a C**t’, ‘Pied Piper’, ‘Adam’s Rib’ – you get the gist. Robin takes a well-known topic and puts it on the grill to toast it to perfection of parody.

But far more than the wondrously absurd storylines is Robin’s gift with prose. He is a master – this is his 33rd book, I think – and he just gets better……. Inhale deeply and don’t exhale until you’ve consumed the mastery of Robin Anderson, comic extraordinaire!

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"Welcome Back Robin Anderson."
Amos Lassen

It has been quite a while since I have had something new from Robin Anderson who is one of the most prolific writers I know. With Anderson, he is both prolific and a good writer. It is going on ten years now that I have been reviewing him and he has never sent me a book that was otherwise anything but fascinating and fun to read. His latest is volume one in a projected series of short stories of which many are take offs on other works of literature that are out there.

To give you an idea of what you can expect, here are the names of some on the stories: “The Picture of Dorian Gay”, “Monsieur Bovary”, “Mary Poppins is a Cunt”, “Adam’s Rib” and “Cinderella Fella”. Anderson writes strong biting satire and he prides himself on the creation of strange characters that do strange things. I believe that it is his ability to tell a story that makes him such a good writer and thus makes us want to read his work.

I have long since stopped trying to figure out where his ideas come and I have accepted the fact that “camp” is Anderson’s middle camp. There have been several articles in the last few years about the death of camp so I can only assume that those who feel that way have never read Anderson. And Anderson is sneaky—-I sat down to read these stories and I realized that he had managed to sneak camp in when I least expected it and as the stories progressed sp did the camp and hilarity. He has a way with writing sex so that it is almost porn (but ever so tasteful) and he has mastered satire and parody. He is amazing in the way he wants new material and new characters with every book (well not every because there are sequels to some).

As I wrote this review, I took a look to see who else had something to say about Robin Anderson and immediately found one by noted reviewer, Grady Harp. Ordinarily that would not be of any importance but this time, I found our reviews to be not only similar but that we both mentioned the same stories. If you have not read Anderson this would be a great place to start and if you have, this is one more book to add to your library.

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