Synopses & Reviews
Boonville is the story of John Gibson, the reluctant heir of an alcoholic grandmother, and Sarah McKay, a commune-reared "hippie by association." They are two young people actively searching for self and community in a small town of misfits, rednecks, and counterculture burn-outs. It's the darkly comic tale of how they try to reassemble the facts of heredity, sexuality, personal expression, love, death, the possibility of an existence without God, and what happens when they choose to make art from their lives.
Review
"Robert Mailer Anderson is a very sick man and a very funny writer." Carl Hiaasen
Review
"Because I think Boonville by Robert Mailer Anderson is terrific, I am obliged to state that he is not a relative. He has, however, written a most exciting first novel and gives more than a few signs that he could become a member of that vanishing American breed a major novelist." Norman Mailer
Review
"[A] a great first novel....[Anderson] has a language and style all his own a lot like English, only funnier. It's got unmistakable echoes of Tom Waits and Calvin Trillin....But there's also a noodling, improvisational rhythm and a ticklesome sense of timing here that register as bracingly fresh....Unlike many comic novels, and even some successful comic novels, Boonville can actually make a person laugh....Robert Mailer Anderson has put Boonville on the map, and Boonville should repay the favor in spades." David Kipen, The San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"Robert Mailer Anderson's a brilliant new voice twitchy, corny, sly-cackling and sad, but most of all, racing with vitality and goosing you to keep up. Boonville is the creepy and hilarious coming-of-age story the territory deserves not your parents' Vineland, but your own." Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn
Review
"Though the book's main characters sometimes feel underdeveloped, the wonderful eccentrics who make up the supporting cast are more than enough reason to keep reading....Pynchon fans will immediately notice similarities not only with Vineland...but also with The Crying of Lot 49. But Anderson is more of a romantic, and an optimist, than Pynchon is. Boonville can be milk-through-the-nose funny at times, particularly in the passages Anderson dedicates to skewering hippies....Anderson slows things down a bit when he tries late in the book to tie up his plot, but his comic timing and sharp wit keep things moving along." Anthony York, Salon.com
Review
"Boonville heralds the debut of an engaging, clear-eyed new talent. Robert Mailer Anderson has achieved an engrossing vision of tangled lives on the edge of the world, and done it on an ambitious scale." Naomi Wolf
Review
"Anderson is sometimes compared to Pynchon, but his writing is more in the spirit of the black comedies of Florida novelist Carl Hiaasen....Maybe the right point of comparison for Anderson lies somewhere between Beowulf and Don Quixote." Patrick Sullivan, Metroactive
About the Author
Robert Mailer Anderson is in the fifth generation of a northern California clan of railroad workers, prison guards, and tamale vendors. He studied under writer Shelby Hearon and has published short stories in Christopher Street. He lives with his wife and son in San Francisco.