Robin Anderson Author Reviews

Sebastian and Seline

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

"What a clever monozygotic sibling I have, identical in every way.”
"You are blessed with the arrow, and I with only a quiver."
Grady Harp - Amazon - February 2015

What a clever monozygotic sibling I have, identical in every way.' 'After all, you have been blessed with the
arrow, and I with only the Quiver' Robin Anderson takes a million and one chances in this stingingly funny
novel 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 SEBASTIAN & SELINE he takes on a massive book, though be aware that, kindness form Robin's heart, the typeface is large and the lines well separated so the book could have been condensed in pages (but thankfully it is not). Right off the bat we are plunged into another Robin Anderson romp. `Beautiful but decadent twins Sebastian and Seline are brought up on an idyllic estate by the sea in Kwazulu, South Africa. Suikerbos is a veritable Garden of Eden but tainted by an evil boomslang - or serpent - in the form of Grandpa "Shaka" Tyson. What he puts the twins through is unforgiveable, but the two young artists and secret lovers go on to launch themselves successfully in London, South America, Rome and Cape Town. However, there's something about their "body art" that's a tad too real... Will their guilty past catch up with them? Will the glitz fall away and the bare bones be revealed? Read on ... and discover corners of human behaviour you never believed existed! Despite all the exotic locations and steamy, all-ports-open sex in this psycho "chiller" thriller, there's a serious issue at stake. It concerns one's identity in a modern, frenetic society where people change places, occupations and lovers.'

Warning - schedule some breathing time to recoup while reading this hilariously fun spoof - there are so many hoots and guffaws that should such moments not be pre-arranged, O2 may be necessary. Another classic!

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"The Fabulous Life"
Amos Lassen

Robin Anderson has a great knack for satire and he uses it on the beautiful people and he is very funny
if not caustic.

Sebastian and Seline are twins and they manage to get themselves into situations that seem unbelievable
at first. There is a lot of sex and a great deal of frolic but beneath the fun there is a serious side here as
well. (I would never disclose what that is so you will just have to read the book). This all has to do with
identity and since we live in a world where change is constant we see that is also true with people.
One day we know someone as say, Bill and the next day he may be something different altogether.

Our twins, Sebastian and Seline were raised in upper class splendor in South Africa. Their paradise
however, has an evil side to it in the form of Grandpa Shake Tyson. They live a life of misery because
of him but manage to escape to London and then Europe and the Americas using their bodies to create
their own kind of art. There is something very strange about their “art” and it could have to do with their “secret” loves.

We get a look at all kinds of human behavior as Anderson gives us a tongue-in-cheek look at the world in a way we seldom get. As you read you find yourself asking if this is real or is it all put-on and that is the beauty of the book and the author. I am not sure how to take him so I do it as a laugh and hope that I am correct. This is like nothing you have ever read before and if you have the chance to read something like it again, you can be pretty sure that it is from the pen of Robin Anderson.

As of right now the book has no American publisher but should soon, Anderson’s comic nature is too good and too wild for only part of the world to enjoy.

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★ ★ ★ ★

A review from Gaydar Nation

When I read the usual disclaimer of “This is a work of fiction… any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental” that prefixes Robin Anderson’s new novel Sebastian & Seline, it raised a big, old smile on my face. The reason? Well, for any other author this would just be a bog-standard legal precaution, but for him it’s an essential get out of gaol free card. Quite literally.

I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Anderson and you only have to spend more than a couple of minutes in his company to realise he’s a brilliant raconteur with some juicy anecdotage about the great, the good-looking and the famous. Only trouble is most of his stories are deliciously libellous too, which is why Anderson ploughs much of his ab-fab life into his writing. What he also does, rather expertly, is juxtapose the glossy glitziness of life with its dark grottiness and this is where, like his other novels, Sebastian & Seline really shines.

The protagonists of the title are beautiful, decadent (natch) twins raised on an idyllic estate, Suikerbos, by the sea in South Africa. The idyll is shattered, however, by Grandpa ‘Shaka’ Tyson who terrorises the twins, repeatedly raping them both in some sick compulsion for dominance. As a result, the young siblings form an unbreakable bond that, in itself, spawns a decidedly skewed relationship between the two because as they grow older they become incestuous lovers and the novel follows them as they travel through the world’s most glamorous cities on an odyssey of sexual loucheness that would bring a blush to the cheeks of even the most seasoned prozzie.

I imagine Anderson himself smiling at that line because naturally he wouldn’t be thinking of the cheeks on a hooker’s face, that’s for sure, because that’s his modus operandi/vivendi. He likes the lewd aside, the legs akimbo money-shot, all done with an indecent dollop of Carry On campness. This is why the novel works because Anderson takes verboten themes and behaviours and undercuts any potential controversy and disgust with histrionic humour, caustic wit and an ironic glint in the eye for the hyper-graphic sex scenes.

And, boy, do they keep on pun-intended coming. Here’s a sample: “Sebastian lowered himself slowly on top of the smiling man, who began kissing him passionately, his eager tongue darting in and out of Sebastian’s mouth, his tumescent, throbbing cock pressed enthusiastically against Sebastian’s responsive length.” This is typical of Anderson’s style - he takes a sexualised situation and spins it with more than a touch of OTT comic deftness. It happens throughout the novel; he writes a scene that is by no means vanilla and adds a scoop of blowing raspberries so you know it’s OK to have a bit of a laugh, even if the subject matter is never going to make the world’s politically correctionists happy.

In essence, Sebastian & Seline is a classic romp, crammed chocker with the Anderson trademarks of designer name dropping, twisted characters and even more tangled plot twisters - there’s corker at the climax here - all Magimix’d up into a light and dark, easily-digestible soufflé of a read. In many respects, Anderson's novels are like the author himself, all Saville Row respectability on the surface with a mischievous dirty mind never far away, which, let’s face it, during these depressing credit crunchy times is a pretty welcome piece of escapism.

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Sally Farmiloe-Neville - Hot Gossip

The mind boggles!

But it will boggle even more now we have arrived at the works of fiction for this month.

My new fave celeb author, the divine ROBIN ANDERSON has done it again with his latest page turning bonkbuster thriller, SEBASTIAN AND SELINE (ATHENA PRESS, £11.99) about an over sexed and murderous pair of identical twins who dress up as each other and cause murder and mayhem wherever they go. The action (correct word here!) takes us from South Africa to Rome, London and South America and back again while the twins get up to all sorts of sexy shenanigans and get up all sorts of sexy partners! As a bonkbuster the tale is deliciously shocking and as a thriller it's completely satisfying after the amoral pair take us through more twists and turns than The Grand Corniche!

ROBIN's publishers ATHENA PRESS launched the outrageous SEBASTIAN AND SELINE at LA GALLERIA on Pall Mall and celeb guests included fellow writers RICHARD COMPTON MILLER and LADY HENRIETTA ROUS and LADETTE TO LADY etiquette expert LIZ BREWER (etiquette? SEBASTIAN AND SELINE? Never -they reckon the rules are there to be broken!)

I chatted to one of ROBIN's delightful ATHENA PRESS publishers, MARK SYKES whom I have known since I was 17 and asked him if the author's extraordinary books were the fruit of an exceptionally vivid imagination or of autobiographical experience. MARK reckoned about 60 - 40 %, making the handsome ROBIN a prime candidate for a tell - all autobiog one of these days! In the meantime he's having too much fun writing his amazing bonkbusters and I reckon that SEBASTIAN AND SELINE, like ROBIN's previous bonkbuster thriller RED SNAPPER would make quite a film.

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