2010 read of the year

My favourite book this year would have to have been Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins.

I know, I know I'm a bit behind the times. This book was first published in 1984.  But I often feel it's rude to chase after a book, and prefer to read them when they come to me.  This particular book was pressed into my hand, along with a bundle of others (which included my close-second best read for the year: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami), as the lender urged me to understand that these were her favourite books ever and I just had to read them.  Now... (private rant) there's nothing more rude when somebody presses a book in your hand in that manner than not to have read it by the time you next see them, or at least to have made a serious attempt to have done so.

The number of books that I might as well have given away in this way (it is rude to ask for them back if they haven't been read now, isn't it?) bah...! But I digress...

I'm a sucker for stories about immortality,  (I think watching The Highlander at an impressionable age set that off) and those that hint on some level just beneath reality where things are interconnected (the Murakami book I mentioned might have more to do with that comment). It's not that I necessarily want to live forever like the characters in these books, but the idea of in one existence witnessing any of a bunch of exciting moments in history appeals to me.  It's for that reason I also like John Masefield's Box of Delights, even though as a story it's a really odd shape. Imagine living to see Beethoven play and to see the Great Wall being used for what it was built. 

In Jitterbug Perfume the hero Alobar does neither of those things, but he and his partner discover a method for extending life which enables them to outlive civilisations.  In that time Alobar, an "eater of beets", among other things stays in a Tibetan monastery, lives in sixteenth(?) century Paris, and eventually moves to the New World taking time out on occasion to consort (my euphemism) with nymphs in the company of the god Pan.

It is the type of book which throws itself at you with the sort of force that makes you think it encompasses more than it actually does. It is a wild, fun and memorable ride, but I'd have to say one I'd only take once.  In the same way a ghost train in a visiting carnival is thrilling the first time, but on subsequent rides you start to notice the light bulb inside the skull or the rusty hinge on which the terrifying spectre swings, I wouldn't want to ruin the experience by putting myself into the position of seeing through anything.  I might read it again, but in a year or two, when the carnival next comes to town.

Before you go running out to read this because I said I liked it, take a wee pause and ask yourself "Am I a prude?"  If you think you might be, click on the link I've put in up top to the wikipedia article about the book.  You'll get a brief summary of the plot and its contents, and if you imagine the subject matter described written with a sort of puerile glee you might get a hint of what you could be getting yourself into.                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

If you like a story so wierd that it requires you to not just suspend, but completely discard disbelief for the duration of your reading, because you know you'll enjoy it all the more for it, ...go out and find a copy.