Boonville

by Robert Mailer Anderson

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.

Genres: Fiction, Novels

276 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Robert Mailer Anderson is an American novelist.

In 2007 he co-wrote, produced, and appeared in "Pig Hunt," a punkabilly horror film set in Northern California.

Reviews

[Brian Fagan · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I saw this book mentioned on Goodreads, it grabbed my attention. I lived in Mendocino County in Northern California for 9 years, and I certainly know the town of Boonville. If you drive from the county seat of Ukiah, where we lived, out to the coast, the meandering and forested mountain road takes you through Boonville halfway there. Anderson lived in the area, and portrays the town in a mostly negative light, both physically and based on a population of druggies, hippies and rednecks. Sarah says: "Everyone here is a failure, it's just a matter of degree." That may be so, but believe me, the surrounding county is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful places in the U. S. There are oak woodlands, dense forests of hardwood and fir, 2,000 foot mountains, vineyards, the quaint coastal town of Mendocino with its victorian homes and art shops, and a rugged coastline that has been used in many films, including Dying Young, Same Time Next Year and Overboard.

The plot of Boonville is straightforward and takes place over a few days time during the late 80's. John believes that the jury is still out on the "success" of his life, but knows that he is a big disappointment to his father. He has just about had it with his girlfriend Christina when his Aunt dies and leaves him her home in Boonville. It's the kickstart he needs to begin a new life. He leaves Christina in Florida and arrives in the odd town of Boonville to see what to do about her place. He's in no rush to make any major decisions. He finds that the town is full of people who've lived there forever, and as a stranger he starts to get not-so-subtle messages that he's far from welcome. The hotel bar's bartender seems friendly, and gives him some useful tips, but otherwise he gets the cold shoulder or worse from the hippies at the commune, the guys on the softball team, random drug dealers, and most forcefully from the ex-boyfriend of Sarah, a woman he meets at the bar his first night in town.

After reading this imaginative 2001 novel, I was surprised to find that Anderson has not written another one.

My own experience with the actual town of Boonville was a comic one. Not long after we moved to Ukiah, I decided to sign up for a fundraising wine tasting event to be held in Boonville by the county cancer support group. With the address next to me, I made the 45-minute drive over the coastal range to Boonville. On the northern outskirts of town, I found the address to be a private home in a cul-de-sac. There were several cars out front, and although I had expected a larger turnout, I realized that I was a bit early, and went on in. There were several couples in the living room, and some voices coming from the kitchen. I sat down next to someone on a couch, and waited for things to get started. Just looking around at the home, and the kids playing out front, and the dress and conversation of the people around me, I got the terrible feeling that I might somehow be in the wrong place. There was no question about the house number, I had double checked that. After listening to the conversation some more, it seemed like everyone there knew each other very well. I thought maybe one woman had stared at me a bit too long . I got up and went into the kitchen so as not to interrupt the living room conversation. I asked a fellow in the kitchen if this was the wine-tasting event. He said no. I didn't even try to explain anything, I just made a beeline for the door and drove off. After going back through town, I found a street with the same name south of town, and soon came upon the identical address number. This time, there was a large park with booths, music and a sizable crowd. I could not believe that I had just walked into a random home.

[Eleni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Too funny.. The people who don't "get" this book have obviously never been to Mendocino County. OK - so perhaps the unbelievably truthful and wacky descriptions of the California locals makes it a bit unreachable for the average Joe - and I agree sometimes the characters lack depth... but boy was this funny.

[Ella Bracchi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED THIS BOOK!! It made me miss Mendocino county so much. I knew of all the town landmarks he wrote about!! So cool! Story was great and I really liked the characters. Strong women and crazy men. I randomly picked up this book at a thrift store in Chester (what are the odds??) but it is high on my all time fav list.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was sucked in by the review blurbs on the back (Confederacy of Dunces and Tom Robbins!), and by the title, cause I was in Boonville once and I'd like to go back.
Unfortunately, the author must have paid a steep price for those reviews, or he has one hell of an agent. It started off ok, was a little funny at times, but quickly fell into a mess of incredibly boring borderline sexist and homophobic cliches with an afterthought of a plot.

It's a shame, I wanted to like it, and it read quickly... but I was so distracted by the cartoonish depictions of everyone that I couldn't stand it. Of course the hippie mom listens to Janis Joplin... and of course the lesbians want to chop your genitals off Mr. Anderson. And of course the rednecks have cars on blocks and get into fights. And of course the hotel has a kindly old barkeep. Sigh....

And the plot... the whole book seems to take place over a week. Really? A week?

Sigh....

[Terri · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book left me feeling unsatisfied and slightly uncomfortable, which is not something I am entirely opposed to. The storyline was interesting enough, but there was some underlying misogyny in the text that bothered me. I normally don't have much issue with books that are a little misogynistic, but something about it in this book made me a little fidgety. I was also offended by the representation of lesbians in the story. The author, maybe intentionally, wrote in a lot of male anxiety about lesbianism, specifically women leaving a man for another woman. He tried to be clever and witty about it, but it came off homophobic and misogynistic in a not so subtle way, which pretty much ruined the fairly enjoyable story for me. The plot was interesting and the descriptions of the town were humorous enough to give it three stars. The ending also left a bit to be desired.

[Wendy C · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not like this book yet I couldn't stop reading it. I skipped large portions (the rebellious young woman arguing with her commune hippie mother about auras and abusive stepdads, the baseball game that goes on for 10 pages, etc.) just to get to the dialog between the hippie chick and the newcomer to Boonville. It's a real town on the way to Mendocino, but this novel portrays its citizens as crystal sniffing hippies with questionable parenting skills, or as redneck losers who practically get away with murder when they're not getting wasted at the saloon until a fight breaks out. I don't know, the locals have seemed pretty nice every time I've passed through the town. The author must really hate hippies.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Travel to Boonville with John Gibson & meet all the quirky characters who call the small California town home. John inherits his eccentric Grandmother Sarah's home after her passing away. Looking for a change he decides to move to this town that's known for having it's own odd language. If you're looking for something a little different, something not so mainstream, then I highly suggest giving Boonville a chance! Filled with quirky, eccentric characters, a memorable plot filled with twists & turns, it will surely keep you entertained & laughing along the way. Though I will say it does have some adult behavior in it, so I would not recommend it for anyone underage or those easily offended. That being said Boonville was an entertaining read filled with humor, love, life & choices.

[Alanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, I love Boonville, the town. I go there a few times a year and hang out with locals and then go camping and/or out to the Mendo coast. So I was excited to read this. But...his writing is not great and it is just dripping with his intense hatred for the town. The Boonville I know and love is in there, you get glimpses here and there, and some of the caricatures are funny but he goes too far. It would be a much better book if he could step out of his prejudices and write more like, "these people are so strange" NO JUDGEMENT. Or maybe some judgement but not "AND I HATE THEM THEY ARE AWFUL YOU MUST HATE THEM TOO." The ending has stuck with me, but felt disingenuous. Meh.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing is highly virtuosic. You can't help being impressed by Anderson's skill with the language and his fertile imagination. But all that talent is exhausting. And when you strip away all the colorful characters and their eccentric interactions, there really isn't much story left. I don't see that he has published a second novel in the seven years since Boonville, but I hope one is in the works--one that is focused more on the reader's experience than the writer's performance. It could be killer.

[Brian Storms · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting story based in the town I will be living in this summer. Things in this book, according to some folks I know in Mendocino, aren't too far from the truth, especially when it comes to character descriptions.

[Suz Davidson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cumbersome and trying too hard to be edgy

[Hilary · Rating 2 out of 5]

The blurbs on this book’s front and back covers make this appear to be a comedic cult novel you’re lucky to have stumbled upon: Jonathan Yardley proclaims it to be the funniest first novel by an American since A Confederacy of Dunces, some San Francisco publication likens it to Tom Robbins, and Norman Mailer and Carl Hiaasen weigh in with praise as well. And initially, the story, about John, a Miami native who moves to a tiny hippie/redneck town in Northern California after his grandmother dies and gives him her place there, has some chuckle-worthy moments and a frenetic energy that’s exciting. For example, John is unfazed when he encounters a man with a gun, because he had “enough street smarts from watching reruns of Baretta.”


Mr. Anderson grew up at least partially in the actual Boonville, and his fictional recreation of the small town, its geography, and its colorful (if one note) characters has its moments. In an introductory note, he offers to buy a beer for any residents who are offended when he’s in town, with the exception of the hippies, to whom he says, “Tough [excrement], hippie. Anyone willing to identify themselves as a hippie here in the 21st century has their head up their ass and gets what they deserve.” And as a former teen punk rocker, I loved this, because there is nothing worse than a counterculture that is slightly different than the one your teenage self identifies with.


But satire, like Fruit Stripe gum, does not age well, and this novel suffers doubly from chronological distance: it was published in 2001, and is set in the late 1980s, so it’s not clear in 2015 whether Mr. Anderson meant some caricatures (including, say, a group of man-hating lesbians, or his dad, who is described almost entirely as A Guy Who Really Likes Ronald Reagan) to be funny in 2001, or just indicative of alleged local attitudes in the fictional 1980s. Additionally, in 2015, it feels rather irrelevant to be attacking the alleged scourge of hippies, or communes, and offensive to be so derisive/dismissive about domestic abuse, homosexuality, etc. To wit, in one small, throwaway moment, there’s a New Age Poetess beloved by several of the older, crunchier female characters, and John finds her book in his grandmother’s house and reads a poem entitled “All White Men Are Rapists.” It’s a long and offensive way to go for a dumb joke about bad artists shoehorning polemics into awful poetry about earth mothers or Native Americans or whatever, and I don’t get the point: are there so many widely celebrated feminist poets that they need to be taken down a peg? In another moment, John wonders for pages about a group of lesbian feminists he encounters, asking careful, considered questions like, “If they hated men, why did they dress like them?” I don’t expect the novels I read to be Great Art, but I would like their sentiments to not feel like a warmed over Gallagher routine.


The novel also completely collapses under its own lack of direction, and once John’s in town (a few pages in, after a perfunctory breakup of a long-term relationship with a woman whose dominant character trait is a desire to Climb The Class Ladder! and Make Money! and Other Things Characters Played By A Sweater-Clad James Spader In 1980s Movies Were Obsessed With!), there’s really very little that occurs. He meets a girl (Sarah, who lives on a commune with her parents), and then ping pongs between other, more action-oriented characters while launching into canned routines that incorporate every adage Mr. Anderson has ever encountered. (On almost every third page, there’s a pause for John to think about some not-really-clever saying of his grandmothers’ or someone else’s, or something like, “It reminded him of that saying they had in South Florida, ‘The further north you go, the more south you went.’ ” It’s like a much less entertaining Andy Rooney co-wrote this book.)

The initial promise here disappears quickly, and it gets stupider as it goes. If I hadn’t been on a long subway ride, I wouldn’t have bothered finishing this, because the end comes from nowhere, makes no sense, and ratchets up the offensive caricatures to a disturbing degree. You’re not missing anything here, unless perhaps you grew up in some tiny Northern California town in the 1980s and want to see that town inartfully skewered in print.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

About halfway through the book, I felt like giving up. I wasn't deeply involved with any of the characters, the writing itself was well-done but not amazing, and I saw no point or direction to the story.

I finished it anyway, because I hate giving up on a book. I will say that I was pleasantly surprised with the second half. The ending is a bit predictable, but not overly so. The last quarter of the book flows much more quickly and smoothly than the preceding 3/4...

In the end, I ended up liking it. I didn't find it to be nearly as funny as it was billed to be.

I realize that this review seems odd and scattered. And that is simply because there is something about this book that really bothered me. I can't really bring what it is into words at the moment, but I felt odd when I finished it simply because I had liked the ending a lot, but still felt cold about the overall experience...

[Malcolm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable, but minor. None of the major characters seem real to me, but somehow the portrait of the small north coast town seems genuine. Satirical and exaggerated in parts, but genuine nonetheless. The higher-end bar for tourists and retirees, the commune, the radical women's art collective. I buy it. That the narrator would end up getting involved with the gorgeous artist/hippie chick despite the bartender's warnings about the insanely jealous ex-husband was too obvious. The author inserts lots of jokes as metaphors which makes an easy read even easier. Side note: I've been noticing that whenever women in books/movies/television make a firm decision to abort an unwanted pregnancy, they will eventually reverse course and keep the baby. I'll continue to investigate, but I suspect this may be as much of a rule as Chekov's gun.

[Charles Kerns · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well worked-over first novel: high-octane energy and exuberance, metastasized metaphors, but mostly a 200 page manrant against all things holy of the 60s, 70s, 80s. Anderson details hippy childmolesters, back-to-earth pig grunters, and road-bar, flat-line, low lifers.

Earlier American cultures fare no better: 50s best-gen, pent up parents along with Anderson's prior-life, Miami suburban marketeer, missionary-postion existence.

He seems to have purged himself with his one novel and moved on to better things as an apparent richguy, a fund raiser for Obama, and an Opera Board member.

Worth the read for non-stop references to the artifacts of the era.

[Kendra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is crazy but a really fun read. The themes are twenty-something, discovering your life (a guy inherits his grandma's remote cabin and moves there from Florida, and he's totally out of place), but since it takes place in one of my favorite spots, the Anderson Valley, I kept reading. There are great, real Mendocino county references in here but some of it has to be exaggerated. I really hope Boonville isn't as violent as it comes across in this book, but it's pretty hilarious how many times this city kid gets in unprovoked fights, car crashes, etc. Makes for a hilarious book, though.

[Jeff · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel like I should have liked this book, but it comes off as a little too provincial with its "edginess" (any book that uses the line "John's grandma had always smelled of gin and vaginal infection" is clearly trying a lot harder than it needs to). Add to that the fact that the ending felt like it was written in the lobby of his publisher 30 minutes before the manuscript was due, and the whole experience just feels forced overall.

[pilla · Rating 2 out of 5]

The blurb on the back compared this book to The Confederacy of Dunces. Ummm... no. It's nowhere near as funny or witty or charming, but it does give you a good sense of what it is like tolive in Boonville.

[katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

laugh out loud funny. the kind of book where i constantly want to call a friend and share a funny sentence or paragraph. can't stop reading it and grinning like an idiot. will be sad when i'm done b/c i am enjoying it so much.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moderately funny. Distressed by the comparisons to Confederacy of Dunces (nowhere near as original) and Tom Robbins (nowhere near as funny). Needs more Boontling. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boontling)

[Patrick Yurick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't read this in a decade or so, just started again. Already laughing at the fluidity of angst, small town antics, and humor.

[Ellen Barker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book because I love the cover on my edition - A sort of Georges Braque-style face. Before I finished chapter 2, though, I was done with the book. It felt like all the worst of Fargo and Deliverance. I put it aside, planning to write a review that basically said "if you thought the movie Fargo was funny, you'll probably like this but I did not finish." But a few days later, I picked it up again, muddled through a little more gore (no chipper-shredders though), and slowly became intrigued. By the time I'd met Pensive Prairie Sunset and Blindman (who serves as umpire for the local and bloody adult baseball games despite being blind), I was hooked. Without even trying to describe the story, I'll just say that the Fargo and Deliverance references aren't completely invalid, and that the quirky characters keep coming, including Franny, an 82-year-old "troll" who figures highly in the last 50 pages. I have to agree with the quote from Carl Hiaasen on the cover: "[the author] is a very sick man - and a very funny writer.

[Paula Boyce · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just a heads-up, if you decide to read this book, it contains way too much vulgarity and violence for my taste--albeit with a humorous twist. The story takes place in 1980s small town, USA. Our main character, John, a floundering marketing analyst in an unsatisfying relationship with Christina, gets word that he has inherited his Grandma's cabin and car. Leaving everything behind, he travels to Boonville to check it out. Stopping at a local bar in town before getting to the cabin, he gets extremely intoxicated, gets the shit kicked out of him, falls for an attractive married woman/hippie, and doesn't know he and his crashed car gets home. This is how he starts his life in Boonville, and it only gets worse from there. Sure, the characters are quirky, and the reader wants the best for John, but there really is no plot. Generally, the book is about characters who spout off about their mixed-up, crazy lives and the choices they made that brought them to Boonville.

[Elizabeth Kane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think you have to have familiarity with the California "counter culture" of the 60's-90's in Northern Calif to appreciate this story, but I really loved it. The writing was so lyrical, the story of a young man from Florida who inherits his hippie grandmother's shack and hundreds of carvings of squirrels (the Squirrel Lady and now Squirrel Boy), he encounters a complete change of pace, out of place and time community that is well bonded by its history and characters and own language. Really special, this was a "i am getting it off my shelf but read it" from friend Dixie.
lovely. Thanks Dix!

[Ljubi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderfully imperfect novel about imperfect people. It’s full of wisdom without, I feel, for the most part, being too sanctimonious. Now, it’s not perfect. There are certainly some now dated references and thoughts, but to me they just felt like a snapshot of the past, rather than dangerous or willfully ignorant. The book is simultaneously uplifting and disillusioned.

I found myself devouring this book, enjoying the bizarre journey through Boonville, and hope to make a trip up there soon to see how it compares.

[Mello Wilsted · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a wonderful story straight out of Northern California. My family lives in Eureka so I grew up doing the drive from the Bay Area to Eureka every couple holidays and passing through all the small towns on the way. This book is a perfect time capsule of a fictionalised account of what it is like to move to one of those small towns as informed by the authors lived experience. So happy it has gotten reprinted and redesigned. The new cover is so cool.

[Cheryl Vickroy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tried the first third of this one, but it's just not for me right now... unsure if I will try it again in the future. I couldn't relate well to the time, place, or characters...

Lots of dialogue between characters also sometimes tries my patience over first person narratives.

[Vivek925 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Initially I thought the book was superficial but there are actually life messages worth thinking about. Mistakes, second chances, who am I etc. There are crazy characters and scenes that seem ludicrous but perhaps truth is stranger than fiction. Overall fun book and relatively short.

[Ann Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book because my husband and I love visiting Boonville on vacation, and I wanted to see what a local could teach me about the area. I always thought that it seems to have a dark side lurking. Enjoyed the story. Thanks.

[Hadley · Rating 3 out of 5]

abrupt ending.. wanted more ....