“It’s the funniest first novel by an American writer to come my way since John Kennedy Toole’s
A Confederacy of Dunces.”
– Washington Post Book World
“Boonville is the kind of story Steinbeck might have written if he was writing books today…”
– Curled Up With A Good Book
“…brilliant, dyspeptic American comedy… (readers) will be rationing pages, putting off the evil hour when there is no more…”– Boston Globe
…may prove to be the first genuine cult novel since Tom Robbins went mainstream. A great first novel.”
– San Francisco Chronicle
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NEW 2024
edition!
“A very sick man – and a very funny writer.” – Carl Hiaasen
“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
...milk-through-the-nose funny..."
– Salon
“…deliciously wicked observations… Anderson is not only a skilled guide to one of America’s shadowier outlands, but a plain top writer as well. He not only takes us there, but he makes us see and hear and sense even the dark corners of this world, and leave us with the characters still echoing.”
– Raleigh News Observer
“Not for the faint of heart... milk-through-the-nose-funny... riotous... a volatile mix of hippies and rednecks... blunt and provocative... plenty of cheap shots... a jolting journey... rowdy, hilarious and heartfelt... pulls no punches: nobody comes off looking good!”
*Review quotes: Russian River Monthly, Salon, SF Examiner, Redwood Coast Review, San Jose Mercury News, Publishers Weekly, Pacific Sun, SF Reader
THE STORY:
Surrounded by rednecks, misfits, and counterculture burnouts, John Gibson the heir of an alcoholic squirrel-sculpting grandmother – and Sarah McKay, a commune-reared “hippie-by-association” – search for self and community in 1989 rural Mendocino County, California. The dying logging industry is colliding with the economic rise of wineries, tourism, and the unregulated marijuana trade in The Emerald Triangle town of Boonville in this hilarious, darkly comic tale of how John and Sarah try to reconcile the facts of heredity, sexuality, personal expression, love, death, the possibility of an existence without God, their cultural wars, and what happens when they choose to make art from their lives.
Also by Robert Mailer Anderson
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"This hear-wrenching 9/11 drama draws back the curtains on American myths, revealing a global and complicated world. A resonant tale for troubling times." Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Beautiful, wickedly funny, and above all, joyous... destined to become a classic." Andrew Sean Greer
"A very sick man - and a very funny writer!" Carl Hiaasen