Review by alavirafi -- The Madness of Robin Randle

alavirafi · Post by **alavirafi** » 09 Jun 2020, 11:17

[Following is a volunteer review of "The Madness of Robin Randle" by Wood Dickinson.]

2 out of 4 stars

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The Madness of Robin Randle is a gripping thriller. Robin Randle, an 18-year-old girl, gets released from a mental asylum. As she returns to her normal life, she realizes that she is straddling two worlds. She dreams, but those are not her dreams. Those are the memories from her past and she tries to relate each of the broken memories. In the real world, she confronts monsters and demons and, a lack of trust always follows her. She must quickly find out whom to trust if she wants to solve the mystery of her life. Will she be able to get herself out of all these messes or will she get lost in her own past? The story waits for you to unleash.

In this novel, Glen Dickinson played well with time. In the story, Dickinson constructs the plot so that it tells the story of Robin Randle, the protagonist who has lived three lives. The author mixed up past, present, and future in a way that confused me like it confused Robin. The description of a lonely life is also given by the author. Reading this book, I felt special importance for my family members as well as my friends. This is because Robin is lonely and she has never experienced love. She always longed for the company which induced a feeling of love for my environment in me. The story contains some homosexual scenes which I consider to be bland and unnecessary. Other than that, the story also contains frequent use of profanity which I do not encourage.

The other characters in this novel are not deep and they last only a few chapters. Some events in the book prefer to be described as horror than a thriller. This can be best described as gothic. The language in this book is not consistent and some parts of the narrative are boring because of the repetition of earlier occurrences. Robin Randle herself tells the story and thus it is written in the first person.

This novel cannot be recommended to readers with strong theological beliefs in a particular religion. This book can be offensive to them. I observed that Dickinson used theories from two different religions: Christianity and Hinduism. The author also used mysticism in the story. People of these beliefs may get offended due to the mixing of their beliefs with other religions.

Throughout the whole book, I frequently found minute editing and grammatical errors. I feel that a rating of 2 out of 4 will be perfect for this novel. I found this book to be boring but I guess it will be not like that to other readers. So, I recommend this book to readers who like gothic stories. Also, the homosexual erotic scenes can be the reason for objection for some readers. That’s why I recommend this book to readers who are not sensitive to the aforementioned matters.

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The Madness of Robin Randle
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riyosha · Post by **riyosha** » 25 Jul 2020, 05:50

I'm curious, what parts were borrowed from Hinduism? I read the book but couldn't recognize anything Hindu. I have reviewed the book too, and I think you may like the review. Anyway, nice review.

Post by **Jeff Kanda** » 06 Aug 2020, 10:47

Dreaming is mostly present in most novels, I like this. Your review on this book is good.

TheFoxPajamas22 · Post by **TheFoxPajamas22** » 24 Aug 2020, 15:02

I was so curious to know what other people thought of this book because I had such a strong opinion of it, so I was happy to come across your review. It's nice to know that I wasn't just being picky. It was agonizing to get through the weak and confusing plot, especially with the frequent grammatical errors. There were some original ideas and, clearly, the author put a lot of research into it, but it wasn't enough to save it from becoming stale and disappointing. I also didn't like how he portrayed women and I feel that it was over-indulgent in its' graphic nature.