Citrus County Brandon, John

There shouldn''t be a Citrus County. Teenage romance should be difficult, but not this difficult. Boys like Toby should cause trouble but not this much. The moon should glow gently over children safe in their beds. Uncles in their rockers should be kind. Teachers should guide and inspire. Manatees should laze and palm trees sway and snakes keep to their shady spots under the azalea thickets. The air shouldn''t smell like a swamp. The stars should twinkle. Shelby should be her own hero, the first hero of Citrus County. She should rescue her sister from underground, rescue Toby from his life. Her destiny should be a hero''s destiny.

From the Publisher:
"There shouldn't be a Citrus County. Teenage romance should be difficult, but not this difficult. Boys like Toby should cause trouble but not this much. The moon should glow gently over children safe in their beds. Uncles in their rockers should be kind. Teachers should guide and inspire. Manatees should laze and palm trees sway and snakes keep to their shady spots under the azalea thickets. The air shouldn't smell like a swamp. The stars should twinkle. Shelby should be her own hero, the first hero of Citrus County. She should rescue her sister from underground, rescue Toby from his life. Her destiny should be a hero's destiny"--From publisher's web site.

Annotation:
After conquering critics with his debut novel ARKANSAS, a quip-ridden depiction of incompetent drug dealers who pose as park rangers, John Brandon heads even further south to document a ludicrous courtship between Toby and Shelby, a pair of teen malcontents in rural Florida. When Shelby and her family move to town, Toby immediately identifies her as a possible escape from his life of abuse and alienation, and he hatches a bizarre criminal scheme to capture her heart. But after his plot goes too far, Toby must decide whether he should try to salvage his and Shelby's well-being by harboring his guilt, or admit his wrongdoing and likely ruin both of their lives. With two incisive and entertaining novels to his credit, Brandon has officially put himself on the map of 21st-century American fiction.

Praise

"Brandon's dry wit, dark imagination, and surprisingly big heart combine to reveal a Florida that, despite (or because of) being more Ted Bundy than Disney World, is absolutely worth visiting." 05/10/2010

"John Brandon joins the ranks of writers like Denis Johnson, Joy Williams, Mary Robison and Tom Drury, writers whose wild flights feel more likely than a heap of what we've come to expect from literature, by calmly reminding us that the world is far more startling than most fiction is. He subverts the expectations of an adolescent novel by staying true to the wild incongruities of adolescence, and subverts the expectations of a crime novel by giving us people who are more than criminals and victims. The result is a great story in great prose, a story that keeps you turning pages even as you want to slow to savor them, full of characters who are real because they are so unlikely. CITRUS COUNTY subverts countless expectations to conform to our expectations of a very good book." - Daniel Handler 07/18/2010

"[H]orrifying yet oddly empathetic second novel, CITRUS COUNTY...is full of unexpected sources of pressure that impel the reader like a juggernaut through the text." - Lauren Groff 08/15/2010

BloomReach Content

Citrus County (Hardcover)

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Praise

Rakuten