With precision plot-making and the richly drawn characterization of a literary novel, Bourne has written a fulfilling page-turner. Kirsten Lunstrum, author of What We Do with the Wreckage and Elita
[ Bourne] has the ability to narrate a characters deepest struggles and sincerest hopes with a clarity nearer to biography than fiction. [ He] understands people, and perhaps most particularly, those living on the ragged edge of hope." Zyzzyva
Praise for Blithedale Canyon "Michael Bournes debut novel is an ode to the pleasures and pains of the return to the familiar, to the gravitational pulls of addiction, old friends, and Springsteen on a car stereo, but mostly of home. Blithedale Canyon is a tenderly nostalgic and page-turning portrait of a man who cant control his worst impulses, written by an author in full command of his own tools." Teddy Wayne, author of The Love Song of Jonny Valentine and Loner
"We are surrounded by stories about winning, but where are all the great modern novels about failure? ... Bourne is brave enough to be honest and honest enough to write an unvarnished truth. Blithedale Canyon brims with humor, it's cathartic, original, and lonely. It's a wild ride." Claire Cameron, author of The Last Neanderthal and The Bear, a #1 Canadian bestseller
"Trent Wolfer is a screwup, but one so smart and observant and oddly self-aware that we can't help rooting for him .... The perfect story for our age of con artists and systemic scams." Pamela Erens, author of Eleven Hours and The Virgins
"Blithedale Canyon is a hard look at the destruction of American capitalism in the lives of the privileged and the devoured. No one here is easy to love, and yet Bourne writes each of his damaged, difficult characters with a clear-eyed complexity that readers will recognize. By the last page, readers will be asking an essential question of our American moment: Can there be any redemption without honesty?" Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum, author of What We Do With the Wreckage and This Life Shes Chosen
"A vivid portrait of Northern California at the turn of the 21st century ... A story of love, addiction, regret, and hope. I couldn't put it down." Edan Lupecki, author of California and Woman No. 17
"Michael Bourne's funny, edgy debut is a literary love story for every man who has ever wondered why he keeps smashing up the things he cares about, and for every woman who's ever wondered what was going on in the head of that guy she spent her twenties trying to fix... A clever blend of literary fiction with elements of crime and noir [ whose] cinematic quality comes from characters that demand a performance." Rain Taxi
"An acute and vulnerable expression of male angst set in Mill Valley, Calif."Publishers Weekly
