Robin Anderson Author Reviews

Regina

★ ★ ★ ★

"The Initial Foray Into the Absurd World of Robin Anderson"
Grady Harp - Amazon

Robin Anderson is a unique writer with no imitators: no one can write hilarious fiction with as many sexy
zingers and wild characters as he. It would be difficult to imagine that there are those out there who do
not recognize his name (or if they have read some of his books, perhaps they are too shy to admit
knowledge of his genre specialty!), but a bit of background information never hurts. And so according
to his PR notes, `Robin Anderson was born and educated in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, and South Africa.
He is a top recognized international interior designer, having started his London-based business in the
late sixties. A regular contributor of design and humorous articles to various magazines, his first novel,
Regina, set in the glossy, bitchy world of interior design, was a best seller in the nineties. An inveterate
traveler, the author uses these experiences for the great variety of settings used in his novels.'

So we get to the first significant work of Robin Anderson - REGINA: A Novel of Some Extremes. Regina is a cross-dresser, a wildly exotic and highly successful interior decorator living in the sixties and seventies (the book was first published in 1998). Regina's lover is referred to as RA (yes, that does have significance...) and it is through RA's narration that we sail through the incredibly hilarious situations - of place, of topic, and of style of Regina's selfish destructive ways. Regina is naughty to the extreme but RA is always there in a supportive role (at times literally physically supportive!) and while the storyline has little direction as far as linear critical definitions, the book reads quickly and with the accompaniment of many guffaws.

Anderson started here, and since REGINA he has created a long line of similar tales that explore the spectrum of sexuality and comedy. Robin Anderson pulls this off so well because at the bottom of it all he is a very fine writer!

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"Stereotyping Time and Character"
Amos Lassen

I do not know how Robin Anderson does it –he is excessively prolific but even more than that is every book he writes is a gem. Granted some gems need a bit more polish than others but Anderson's gems sparkle all the time and they sparkle with wonderful wit. Anderson takes us back to the 1960's and 70's where we meet the droll Regina, an effeminate interior decorator. As the business increases, Regina becomes more and more greedy and she sets out on a journey of his own self-destruction. And as he destroys herself, we can be sure that he destroys others. We all know someone like him who delights in others' hard times but is left alone when her troubles begin. Regina thinks that wit will cure all but it is obvious that this is not the case. The novel is narrated by Regina's lover and he seems to be the person who suffers the most from Regina. We root for him and are taken in by his naiveté.

If you have ever read anything by Anderson, you know he can pack more into a novel than others usually do and "Regina" is no exception. As usual with Robin Anderson, I choose not to discuss the plots but it is enough to say that the book will totally pull you in and keep you reading until you close the covers. Be careful though – reading Robin Anderson is addictive.

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