Skinny Legs and All

Ellen Cherry Charles, that archetype of the small-town artist fleeing fundamentalist shadows, arrives in Manhattan with her welder husband Boomer Petway towing a gleaming Airstream trailer sculpted into a roast turkey—complete with drumsticks and stubby wings—a monument to whimsy that propels their marriage into immediate crisis. Robbins structures the novel as a picaresque pilgrimage, intertwining Ellen Cherry's stalled career as a painter with Boomer's unwitting ascent in the art world; his turkeymobile lands in the Museum of Modern Art, while she waitresses at Isaac and Ishmael's, a restaurant improbably co-owned by an Arab and a Jew. This setup—equal parts satire and prophecy—positions Ellen Cherry amid Middle Eastern tensions refracted through her uncle Buddy's apocalyptic preaching; Buddy, a televangelist with Third Temple ambitions, schemes to ignite Armageddon from his Roanoke pulpit.

The novel's formal ingenuity shines brightest in its animated quintet: Spoon, Dirty Sock, Can o' Beans, Painted Stick, and Conch—mystically enlivened objects who embark on a 6,000-mile trek from a dumpster to Jerusalem, debating theology and human folly en route. Their chapters, narrated in a voice both ancient and irreverent, form a counterpoint to the human plot; Spoon yearns for the 'nekkid' intimacy of jelly delivery, while Dirty Sock embodies slovenly wisdom. Robbins deploys these objects not as mere gimmicks but as philosophical interlocutors, peeling away Salome's seven veils—those metaphors for illusion—to expose religion's hypocrisies; the narrative culminates in a belly dance that synchronizes with a Super Bowl sermon, merging carnality and revelation in rhythmic precision.

Voice is Robbins's truest instrument here; his prose—'jazzlike, mystically precise,' as one character might say—swings from pornographic puns on 'naked' versus 'nekkid' to erudite dissections of pork-and-beans eschatology. The restaurant scenes pulse with life: Lebanese dancer Vena Veritas gyrates toward enlightenment, while Arab cook Abu and Jewish chef Ishmael bicker over falafel in a microcosm of peace. Structurally, Robbins weaves timelines with semicolonic grace—Boomer's Jerusalem commission; Buddy's rising cult; the objects' odyssey—building toward a climax where Vice Presidential machinations nearly derail the divine comedy. It's a novel that performs its themes: art as salvation, love as the ultimate unveiling.

For all its dazzle, Skinny Legs and All falters in its resolution; the schmaltzy Super Bowl convergence—wherein Ellen Cherry receives cosmic wisdom amid the dance—feels like a wet firecracker, diffusing tension without earning catharsis. Robbins's ambition to reconcile opposites (Israel-Palestine, art-commerce, sacred-profane) strains under expository digressions on biblical hermeneutics and canned-goods mysticism; entire chapters detour into theory, halting the narrative's momentum. Moreover, characters like the predatory gallery owner Volusia and Boomer himself verge on caricature, their arcs resolving too neatly in Robbins's defiant realism. These reservations—specific to pacing and closure—prevent unreserved triumph; the book preaches when it might better seduce.

Ultimately, Skinny Legs and All endures as a roadmap for the modern grotesque, inviting readers to drop their veils and confront the skinny-legged truth beneath. In an era still grappling with Buddy's ilk—evangelists peddling end-times amid geopolitical strife—Robbins's novel resonates formally and thematically; its objects remind us that wisdom often hides in the overlooked. Ellen Cherry emerges wiser, remarried to her turkey sculptor, embodying the romantic core Robbins champions: love, that most persistent pilgrim.