"Perfect.... The sheer power of Bonneville Stories is enough to make you gasp and stare. It's not the power of wild violence or explicit sex; it is a more subtle strength, the strength of imagining the worst of everyday life.... This is a brilliant collection of beautifully written stories that made me cringe, grimace, and laugh, while sometimes moving me to great pity. There just aren't any flaws here, and I can't possibly do this book justice in a review — no one could, really.... You simply must read this one for yourself." —Laurie Edwards, CultureCartel.com "Doyon has what all great writers have: that special something that makes their work compulsively readable, and characters that live on in our imaginations until, with time, we're not sure if they were real or just people we've read about.... Doyon's characters are more real to us because he manages to instill in his writing slices of reality that hit us where we live, marking us forever with a sudden truth about the human condition. And isn't that what great art is all about?" —Robin Landry, The Compulsive Reader "Doyon's skills as a storyteller are well-developed, and his text is marked by a clean incisive prose that shows little sign of affectation or device.... Perhaps the ruling theme in Bonneville Stories is one of desperation. Some of the Shenandoah locals make a brief sojourn through or past desperation, becoming more whole in the process, while others reside there, becoming monoliths stuck in a nearly existential paralysis of indecision and/or self-absorption. If Doyon has a moral point it's perhaps that, while there are no promises in this sphere, to stand still is to court the thunderbolt. Bonneville Stories is a brisk, fascinating read, and we recommend it without reservation." —Charles Allen Wyman, The Absinthe Literary Review "You remember that guy in Greek mythology who was doomed to push the boulder up the mountain only to have it roll down the other side for all eternity? Imagine if one day he got to the top of the mountain and that rock just sat there, perfectly balanced. Imagine the look on his face. Imagine him singing merrily and dancing down the mountain. Imagine a giant Monty Pythonesque finger emerging from the clouds to give that rock a little nudge and send it back down. That is Bonneville Stories in a nutshell. It is a fabulous book of short stories peopled with the strangest, most non-adapting people a body could ever want to meet. From the mayor, who was chased out of town over a complicated fireworks scam and now hides in the illegal bar he has made out of a friend's barn, to the one-armed vigilante child, Bonneville Stories drops tale after tale of nihilistic glee in your lap. But it works. The characters are endearing because they are stupid, foolish, arrogant, short-sighted, and drunk. They are just like you and me. It's a book of the wild sorts of stories we only wish were ours to tell." —Jim Martin, 3AM Magazine "These are stories you can't put down, characters so real they could be your neighbor. Doyon has a way of making his quirky backwater protagonists into heroes and heroines — you end up rooting for them to succeed despite their often pathetic, frequently desperate natures." —Bernadette Geyer, BerniE-zine "Very good in an unusual sort of way that grips you without you knowing." —BookLore "I really enjoyed these stories.... The author's writing has been compared to Roald Dahl and Ray Bradbury. May I humbly add the name of Garrison Keillor to that list." —Paul Lappen, Dead Trees Review "Mark Doyon's compulsively readable fiction presents a fascinating and frightening version of a world where (mis)fortune rules." —Scott Donaldson, biographer of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Cheever "Like passing into The Twilight Zone, where small-town folk are faced with life-changing events.... Reminiscent of Sherwood Anderson." —Joyce Dixon, Southern Scribe "An updated version of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio." —Michael Bryson, The Danforth Review "Doyon's stories explore a quirky environment evocative of Kurt Vonnegut novels." —William & Mary Alumni Magazine "Mark Doyon is a consummately skilled writer... and Bonneville Stories clearly documents him as an author to watch." —Midwest Book Review MD | Bonneville Stories | Jagged Whimsy and Other Stories | Slingshot to Obscurity | Disco-bibliography | Blurbfest | Bloggy Yada | Spoken Word | Linktastic | Arms of Kismet | Wampeters | Contact | Home ©2009 Wampus Multimedia. All rights reserved.