Jitterbug Perfume – A road novel at heart, but a million beets away from the likes of Jack Kerouac

It would be a great injustice to dismiss Tom Robbins, as many have, as merely another writer of 60’s nostalgia. Although reading a Robbins novel is like going on the biggest hallucinatory trip of your life, the lyrical beauty of his prose is what shines through from the base of his plots and although at times his writing may seem completely and utterly bizarre, it is always wholly coherent.

Jitterbug Perfume is no exception. Never before have I digested a novel in its entirety without once having to go back and reread a sentence. In fact, I didn’t feel I was reading it at all; the poetic elegance of Robbins’ prose seemed actually to be speaking (and at times even singing) to me. I was swept along effortlessly by a momentum as steadfast as a heartbeet (see what I did there?) while insights and epigrams dispersed like sparkling diamonds amid the text provided intermissions in tempo where I was literally forced to stop for a moment and contemplate the meaning of life.

At its most basic, Jitterbug Perfume is a celebration of scent, a nod to the romantic ideal of the poetic art of perfumery. It is a novel overflowing with unadulterated romping, where sex and spirituality are explored so inseparably the reader is left utterly befuddled; unsure whether to reach for a bible or the Kama Sutra. With all this comes the rampant eroticism of a god suffering the blues, the search for the secret ingredient of the most successful perfume in the world and the quest for eternal youth. Along the way we are introduced to a veritable menagerie of unforgettable characters; an immortal custodian, his Indian wife, a bisexual waitress, a French odour tycoon, his barmy relations, and an obese Creole bayou beauty. These characters, with seemingly nothing in common at the beginning of the story, save for a love of fragrance and the appearances of unexplained beets, in the end all find their ostensibly different agendas united in a mutual search for inner tranquillity.

The cogs of the plot are driven by a road narrative that begins in ancient Bohemia and ends in Paris, 9pm, in the back of a black limo. The story follows Alobar, an ancient king who narrowly escapes death a number of times, on his 1000 year odyssey across Asia, Europe and the Americas with his beautiful wife Kudra. Embarking on a quest to uncover the secrets of immortality they learn that everlasting youth can be achieved through breathing, bathing and bonking. (If only!) However, while Kudra and Alobar manage to maintain an amazingly harmonious relationship for six centuries, they do not see eye to eye on the value of extended life. For Alobar, “longevity for longevity’s sake is enough;” while Kudra believes “new worlds grow old” and seeks some greater purpose, a home and a place where she can belong. Their disagreement brings them to settle in Paris in the 1600s.

Some years later, in an effort to escape the threats of society in Paris, they attempt ‘dematerialisation’ and while Kudra is successful, Alobar is not. Over the next three hundred years Alobar travels with the less than ambrosial smelling Pan to the New World, where he continues, companionless, through a new series of escapades that include owning a spa in Montana, becoming janitor to Albert Einstein and bombing a laboratory in MIT. However, without Kudra, Alobar begins to deteriorate and eventually comes to realise that he must place Kudra above his desire for everlasting life.

It was at this point in the story that I became totally convinced that the secret of true immortality lies not in the longevity of physical life but in the timeless immaturity of love. Jitterbug Perfume is evidently then, a fantastic love story. Alobar and Kudra’s love is beautifully written, Robbins has a delicious way of making love in the old seem as young as the day they met and not once was I disgusted to realise the rampant sex scenes being described where those of two 1000 year old cronies!

Jitterbug Perfume is a story of epic proportions that has everything you could ever desire from a novel; Robbins will have you laughing out loud on one page and underlining passages of exquisite philosophical wisdom the next. Wrapped up in all the sparkling metaphors, sexy romps, beetroots and throwaway puns, you'll find a stench with an insatiable sex drive, spirituality with a sense of humour and everything you need to inspire you once conventional religion proves insufficient.