Boonville: A Novel

by Robert Mailer Anderson
originally published: November 1, 2001
new edition: April 1, 2024
paperback: 308 pages

from the Back Cover

"This . . . may prove to be the best cult novel since Tom Robbins went mainstream." —San Francisco Chronicle

Surrounded by misfits, rednecks, and counterculture burnouts, John Gibson—the reluctant heir of an alcoholic grandmother—and Sarah McKay—a commune-reared "hippie-by-association"—search for self and community in the hole-of-a-town Boonville. As they try to assemble from the late-twentieth-century jumble of life the facts of sexuality, love, and death, and face the possibility of an existence without God, John and Sarah learn what happens when they dare to try to make art from their lives.

"Terrific, [and] 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

"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 parent's Vineland, but your own." —Jonathan Lethem

"A sardonic and beautifully imagined first novel . . . pages of well-tuned humor . . . [with] an exemplary eye for emotional detail." —San Francisco Weekly

"A very sick man — and a very funny writer." —Carl Hiaasen

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