Customer Reviews

Boonville: A Novel

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

(From my Zentertainment.com review):

That the strange little town of Boonville, California is an obscure target makes it no less an easy one.

And if I told you that the first word in the novel is "Boonville" and the last is "Yee-haw," you might fairly assume that Robert Mailer Anderson lets the obvious gags write themselves and adds nothing worth a second look.

Not at all. I have lived in Boonville for just over a year now myself, and in fact I only read Anderson's novel for that sad little "I can see my house from here!" thrill, but if anything, the familiar setting proved to be a mild distraction from what is otherwise a hilarious and morbidly charming book.

John Gibson inherits a cabin and a demented legacy from his grandmother and reluctantly travels from Florida to California, leaving his girlfriend of several years in the process. He arrives in town on page 11, and by page 72 he has already decided, "F**k it... F**k it all. F**k being hung over and getting beat up... Most of all, f**k Boonville."

But he doesn't quite manage to get out, and soon he meets Sarah McKay, a young "hippie by association" who is more ambitious and self-aware than her fellow dropouts at the Waterfall commune, and thus inevitably more bitter, as well. She and John share a distracted but very real attraction and interest in one another, but little comes of it in any traditional or predictable sense due to an unlikely series of obstacles, ranging from naked hippies grunting menacingly on all fours to violent rednecks whose idea of reconstructive surgery is super-glue to reattach a chopped lip.

Anderson provides (pop) cultural context without resorting to the simple name dropping of lesser writers. He is also refreshingly unconcerned with political correctness. However, he abandons it not for the sake of mean jokes, but keen insights. He is a writer of absolutely vicious humor, and yet Boonville is satisfying not because it causes the reader to wince at its merciless jokes (though it certainly does), but because on the same page that makes you cringe, you're also likely to nod your head at an unfortunate but familiar bit of dysfunction or even smile at an unexpected display of heart.

If Tom Robbins was as angry as he is surreal, he might have written Boonville. Instead, it was left to Robert Mailer Anderson, which is perhaps a mixed blessing for the people of Boonville, but great news for readers everywhere else.

Boonville is like Carl Hiaasen crossed with Updike's Rabbit stories. Hilarious! A page turner. Energy in each sentence. Dark in it's humor, the funniest passages ring absolutely true, dealing with the human condition and the big question of why we exist. I can't remember a better first novel, maybe Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth.

I bought this book in San Francisco on the way to visit the Mendocino Coast. I grew up in a small town ( We played Boonville in basketball)in the area and found this book to be a hoot and a fairly accurate portrayal of small town life in Northern California. From the "hip" alternative culture that can safely hide in a small town to the more established residents who have been there for generations, this brought a feeling of Deja vu to me. I am one of those who "escaped" and enjoyed the trip back, probably because it has been many years and was certainly temporary! Also enjoyed to references to small towns in the area, including my own, which I have never seen in print before. It is clear that the author has spent his time in Boonville. I enjoyed this book a lot.

I don't know anything about the real-life basis of this book and I don't really care. I picked it up as a quick read, with no expectations. It's not the Great American Novel

Downside: It needs some editing. The storyline with Balostrasi went nowhere, served no purpose, and should have been left out. Sarah's character never filled out beyond the descriptions on the page. There were a few too many undifferentiated rednecks. It's a bit wordy (I didn't mind this but I some people might). The last chapter could have been omitted completely; it tied up ends that didn't need any more tying-up.

Upside: It was funny (people, get over yourselves). Even the characters that other reviewers have complained were mocked earned a measure of the author's and protagonist's affection and admiration (and the protagonist himself is mock-able). Anyone who thinks the characters were over-the-top doesn't get out enough; I know plenty of people who are this eccentric and more. The descriptions and ideas, while overwritten, are entertaining and sometimes insightful.

"Boonville" is not a great book. not at all. However, It kept me interested for a week and it had it's moments, such as the softball game and a young woman's struggle with her unborn morality. But it was kinda hokey, too; Cliche depictions of feminists, locals and ignorant yuppies sipping pinot noir.
that said, hippies, or people with new age tendancies, need not even crack open this book as Anderson has his fun with you guys....and he did make me laugh when doing so.

I live near to Boonville and can relate intensely with the dark humor of small towns. This book's language itself is something of a genius creation. I think we will see Robert Mailer Anderson become one of the greatest authors of the new millennium!

Captures the essence of Northern Cal coastal towns -- at least as they were in the 80s when I toured the area.

The only other book I've read in recent years in the same league is The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. But the subject matter of The Corrections (senile dementia) was painful, so The Corrections left me satiated but drained. Boonville left me satiated and energized.

Boonville is a book that is funny and witty in places, but plodding and unfocused in others. Its most consistent flaw, however, is that the humor is too broad and cliched to be more than slightly amusing. Gun-toting rednecks who drive (while intoxicated, naturally) pick-up trucks and muscle cars, man-hating, cliche-spouting feminists, and pot-smoking hippies are such easy targets that to do these type of characters justice, you have to give them a little more nuance and depth than Anderson does here.

John Gibson is the protagonist and "straight man" of this novel, a young man who moves from Miami to his deceased grandmother's cabin in Boonville, California. As soon as he arrives in Boonville, the reader sees that this is going to be one of these places, common in books and indie movies, where almost every character is quirky and offbeat in one way or another. The residents of Boonville are so isolated from mainstream society that they have their own language. This is more distracting than amusing, as most of the time I couldn't figure out what the speakers of this dialect were supposed to be saying.

John has recently broken up with his girlfriend, and is tired of his job and family in Miami. He has conveniently inherited his eccentric grandmother's cabin. The grandmother had been considered weird even by Boonville's standards, and when John arrives he finds himself surrounded by bizarre squirrel sculptures. In typical novelistic timing, the first time John walks into a Boonville pub, he meets a beautiful young woman, Sarah McKay, who was raised on a local hippie commune. Sarah, unfortunately, has a crazy ex-husband who stalks John for the rest of the novel.

The commune were Sarah lives with a seemingly endless variety of hippie freaks, is another chance for Anderson to go completely over the top with the attempts at humor. It's hard to imagine such a community actually functioning, as most of the residents, as described here, are practically foaming at the mouth. Some, labeled as "future primitives," literally walk around on all fours and grunt like animals all day. Others are breeding mutant rodents for deviant sexual practices. Some of the humor in this book sounds like it was conceived when the author was seriously stoned. As is well known, such states can distort your sense of what is brilliant and meaningful.

Despite these criticisms, I can't say that Boonville is a bad novel. I found it compelling enough to finish it rather quickly, though I did skip over some passages. There is some good writing here, and the basic archetypal theme of someone traveling to a distant place to find himself makes for an interesting story.

I'm still not sure what picture of Boonville (an actual place) the reader is meant to leave this novel with. Sarah finds it to be a place she desperately needs to escape, and when you consider all of the dysfunctional misfits who inhabit it, this seems like a sound judgment. However, at the same time, John seems to feel at home here, for reasons that are less than obvious, aside from a feeling of connection with his grandmother.

Boonville is Anderson's first novel, and he definitely shows promise here. One reason I was a little disappointed with it is that it managed to garner so many great reviews on the back cover that I was expecting something extraordinary. It is mostly a good read and did make me laugh in places, and depending on your sense of humor you might love it, as some readers apparently do.

This is a great "beach book" full of some laughs. It's certainly not great literature & is not expected to be taken as such. It's odd that some of the "Boontlings" have taken it so seriously & are offended. All little towns are like this, not just Boonville & they should be delighted that someone found them charming enough to create a story with them as the main character. For heaven's sake, lighten up & get a life!!

When the Washington Post's Jonathan Yardley dissolved into giggling enthusiasm, I should have known that Anderson's first novel was no equal to My Search for Warren G. Harding by John Plunket or Confederacy of Dunces by Robert Kennedy Toole. But I liked the cover blurbs, and the real Boonville casts a bizarre shadow, even for Northern California. Some parts of the story did keep their promise. A baseball game with in-fielders who could have wandered into the plot from a Bruce Willis movie. A Florida live-in girlfriend who takes up with a neighbor practically before our antihero can find a California pay phone. But most parts are forced. Our hero has ingested too much. The satirical targets don't matter, and the plot past the midpoint becomes a swim in molasses even after Anderson introduces a free sex commune. My advice: Re-read Plunket.