Citrus County by John Brandon
My rating: 4/5 cats
i blink and suddenly i have read two of the buzz books of the summer!
this one i have mike to thank for—i would have just bought it (like i did the author’s first book) with good intentions, and it would have sat around until lord knows when, but his review made me read the first three pages right there at work and say—”oh, yes, i will read this soon”. and look at me following through!
this man writes just the way i like—he has a story to tell and he tells it, with very few literary pyrotechnics. i love a lack of bullshit in contemporary writers. this is a book that grabs you right from the beginning (lgm). it opens with a scene of littering and verbal cruelty to a child and escalates into more serious crimes by the end. but it is not, strictly speaking, a crime novel; it is more about restlessness and the emptiness of rebellion.
mike was so restrained in his review w/r/t concrete plot elements that it makes me want to follow suit.
overall, it is a very sad story. his characters rattle around like pinballs, slamming into each other, affecting each other’s lives in ways both criminal and tender as they discover the limitations of their criminal capacities and their capabilities for strength and survival through crushing disappointments. it is about two kids trying to find themselves and an adult who suddenly realizes he forgot to keep looking. (i write the tag lines for movie posters)
mr. hibma is a fantastically-wrought character. his slow dawning realizations are a perfect contrast to the two teenagers testing each other’s boundaries and discovering their own. (see?) he is the “cool” and unconventional teacher who chose where he would teach based on the throw of a dart. cool, right? well, no. and this is why he ends up where he does, a little bewildered and watching his life drag by with no goals or agency. as great as shelby and toby’s stories are, this is the one that hit a little close to home, and i loved watching his struggles.
here is something lovely:
The afternoon hours were the flattest. They were like Citrus County itself, fit only for ambush. Shelby wanted to get higher or lower. There were no basements, no second stories. Her house had no attic. Shelby didn’t want to keep walking on the same ground. She was on a dumb plank of land where nothing would roll away. Everything stayed right where it was and festered. Shelby had been reduced to silly fantasies—visions of her and her dad moving off and working a farm somewhere, visions of going to stay with her Aunt Dale in Iceland, of having Aunt Dale show her how to be a rigid, invulnerable woman. Shelby wanted something more dramatic, more honest. She wanted a crashing ocean instead of the wash of the Gulf. She wanted weather that could kill you. She wanted respect from someone who actually knew how to judge.
if that doesn’t just sum up adolescence perfectly…
i strongly recommend this, even if you hate dave eggers. mcsweeney’s fiction list has overall been excellent, even though their foundation (eggers) is a self-aggrandizing douchebag. sold?
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