?With Citrus County 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."
?New York Times Book Review "I finished the novel a true believer:
that Citrus County is gorgeous and deserves to be read widely; and
that John Brandon is a great young writer who can?and probably
will?do just about anything."
?Lauren Groff, San Francisco Chronicle "[Brandon] focuses not on
the charms of manatees and meandering rivers but on decaying strip
malls, abandoned subdivisions and the claustrophobic side of
small-town life. He gives us a vividly realistic picture of a place
teeming with swamps, sinkholes and insects, "creatures with
stingers and pincers and scorn in their hearts" ? and a human
population with much the same attitude.? Brandon draws his
characters so deftly that we can be horrified and intrigued by them
at once, and his plot just as deftly avoids cliches."
?Colette Bancroft, St. Petersburg Times "If you care at all about
books, and what they can do, then this dirty realism is for you.?
There are very few writers who are as adept at stripping a sentence
down to its very essence; nor are there many whose sentences leave
a reader so black and blue."
?John Hood, Miami Sun-Post "[A] chilling and dispiriting new
novel... this book is impossible to put down."
?Jim Ross, Ocala Star-Banner "Citrus County luxuriates in the
blighted majesty of rural America.? The narrative is bracing,
concerning teenage lovers who find themselves in a true-crime caper
gone awry. What makes [Brandon] unique is his empathy toward the
community at large. He is concerned not only with the key players,
but also with the people affected by their actions, those
characters usually ignored like the collateral damage many authors
consider them to be. What results is a novel suffused with musky
swamp air, teenage love, and mosquito bites."
?Paul M. Davis, SF Weekly "[Citrus County is] not an easy book. One
doesn't want to imagine that cold-blooded quasi-sociopaths are on
the local eighth grade track team. But Brandon's unflinching look
at the devastated inner life of his characters is so unerring that
it's hard to look away. Exactly as they planned, by unleashing
their most macabre impulses these characters become more vibrant,
impossible to ignore."
?Janet Potter, Bookslut "John Brandon's macabre novel Citrus County
is at once touching, funny, and terrifying. Definitely an odd (and
extremely rare) combination, but Brandon is a master at creating
greatly flawed, believable characters who jump off the page and
into our memories. Brandon's debut novel Arkansas greatly impressed
me and landed on my favorite novels of 2008 list. Citrus County is
a worthy successor, a book that haunts as well as it
entertains."
?Largehearted Boy "Last night I stayed up late because I had to
finish John Brandon's upcoming novel Citrus County. And when I say
I had to finish, I mean I was compelled! Gripped! Creeped out! I
was nervous about what might happen to the various characters in
their various states of peril! John Brandon is a wonderful writer
in a literary way but not MERELY. I mean, there's real suspense.
Sometimes writers get all beautiful on you and forget to remind you
to turn the pages. Not John Brandon! He does it all."
?Jack Pendarvis ?Pursues relentlessly what each of us might find
daily in a Florida town? The purity of thought and of unadorned
line are remarkable."
?Barry Hannah ?John Brandon is my favorite new writer. His debut,
Arkansas, was hilarious and at the same time disturbing in its
detached violence. It set a high bar, and Citrus County nudges that
bar even higher. This is a writer to watch, to reread, and to
envy."
?Tom Franklin ?Brandon writes of fatigue, longing, and finally
love, with an energy and wit that is victorious and entirely his
own."
?Deb Olin Unferth ?Citrus County is a real charmer, infused with a
kind of rueful hilarity that reminded me of the great Tom Drury.
The book makes you laugh even as it breaks your heart, and it may
be, among other things, one of the best books about junior high
ever written."
?Dan Chaon ?John Brandon is a prose marksman?half Denis Johnson,
half Elmore Leonard."
?Davy Rothbart ?John Brandon isn't the only writer documenting the
dissolving of American communities, but he may be the funniest. His
criminals are like no others I know, and his dialogue feels like
the wild original of something domesticated in most novels."
?Marshall Klimasewiski
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