Boonville is the story of two people actively searching for self and community in a small town of misfits, rednecks, and hippies. It's a darkly comic tale that explores the possibilities of existence without God, the ways we reassemble the facts of heredity, sexuality, personal expression, love and death.
Review: "...he has a language and style all his own - a lot like English, only funnier...There's also a noodling, improvisational rhythm and a ticklesome sense of timing here that register as bracingly fresh...May prove to be the first genuine cult novel since Tom Robbins went mainstream."
- David Kipen, San Francisco Chronicle "Because I think Boonville 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
"Robert Mailer Anderson's a brilliant new voice - twitchy, sly, cackling and sad, but most of all, reacing 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
"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 ambitous scale. Best of all, he is writing as one of the rare members of his emerging generation that brings a true moral and philosophical depth to his edgy subject matter."
- Nancy Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth
"Robert Mailer Anderson is a young writer of energy, style, and wit. Those three qualities may not sell books in today's hypermarket, but I found them charming."
- Martin Cruz Smith, author of Gorky Park
Bio: ROBERT MAILER ANDERSON is in the fifth generation of a northern California clan of railroad workers, prison guards and tamale venders. He studied under writer Shelby Hearon, and has published short stories in Christopher Street. He lives with his wife and son in San Francisco.
