When plugging John Brandon’s Citrus County to friends as the best novel I’ve read lately, I find myself fumbling for an appealing summary.? The basic premise is a tough sale, at least for the over-fourteen crowd: a pubescent bad boy has a crush on a pubescent good girl, and she likes him too!? But?the pitch is even tougher, at least for the non-sociopathic crowd, when I turn to the real meat of the plot: the aforementioned bad boy, who really is very bad, kidnaps the girl’s four-year-old sister and keeps her in an underground bunker in the woods.
Brandon doesn’t make any moves to soften the blow of the abduction.? There is no cheerful or ironic way around the creepiness of the act and its aftermath.? The boy sneaks into the toddler’s room, stuffs her in a duffel bag, and hides her in a dank cellar for a long time.
I feel compelled to somehow apologize for this book- and myself- for taking such pleasure in such disturbing material.? Somewhat averse to crime genres myself, I don’t find it surprising that Brandon’s editors opted for a mysterious but inoffensive vagueness when crafting the back-cover synopsis.? Waxing abstract is probably the best way to lure potential readers into this uncomfortable territory, and it doesn’t sell the book short to argue that its complex ideas ultimately transcend its central perversion.
Nonetheless, and not only for the sake of filtering out the morally squeamish, it seems worthwhile to begin a discussion of Citrus County by laying out its horrifying premise from the onset.? Because while the book is sweet, funny, and not nearly as upsetting as the above summary might suggest, it never relinquishes its dark side.
It goes without saying that there is much more to Citrus County than the kidnapping.? For one thing, Brandon’s innovative prose is engrossing on its own.? Brandon’s style is effortless, but it vibrates with energy.? It is fluid and unadorned, yet each chapter stunned me with lines whose wit or poignancy left me breathless.? I will forego additional gushing in this regard, however, and simply say that it would do Citrus County injustice to dwell exclusively on its plot.
Described by one critic as “Southern Gothic goes to middle school,” Citrus County, like its Gulf Coast namesake, feels both alien and alarmingly familiar.? Brandon, who grew up just south of Citrus County, depicts the town’s?drifting manatees, vicious bugs, and unruly flora in the intoxicating, exaggerated style of the grotesque.?? The novel’s setting is a humid dream-nightmare of dark, twisting woods and abandoned hideaways- all alongside the ubiquitous mundanity? of Styrofoam, strip malls, and the soda upon which thirteen-year-old Toby appears to subsist.? Both surreal and banal, Citrus County is the perfect stage for Brandon’s ode to the sheer weirdness of the human mind.
Brandon’s treatment of the novel’s three main characters- confused adolescents Toby and Shelby, and Mr. Hibma, their equally confused geography teacher- is unusual and profoundly affecting.? Despite their distinct voices, all three seem connected by a common, troubling thread: an urge to assert or redefine themselves by testing their capacity for evil.? Each narrator is gripped by antisocial impulses, ranging in severity from “petty hoodlumism” to murder.? ??It’s strange to liken Shelby’s feeble attempts at delinquency with Mr. Hibma’s homicidal fantasies (and Toby’s actualized crime), but it is this very dissonance that highlights the psychological parallels between them.? Even more interesting is the way in which the disconnections between the characters, and within their own self-concepts, implicitly involve the reader.
It would seem that the most logical way for an author to elicit sympathy for a difficult character would be to track his thought process in such detail the reader can explain, if not justify, the? otherwise incomprehensible.? Citrus County takes a different route, and the effect is unnerving.? We definitely see Brandon’s characters up close; they divulge quirks and secrets that are consistently engaging and, at times, embarrassingly intimate. Citrus County stops short, however, of making sense of their upsetting thoughts and behaviors.? After weeks of reflection, I still can’t explain why Toby- a troublemaker but no sadist- kidnaps Shelby’s sister.? The odd thing is that?Toby doesn’t seem to understand either.
Brandon is deeply attuned to Citrus County and its drama, but he doesn’t feel so much omniscient as he does voyeuristic.? His lens zooms in on certain things, like Toby’s interactions at the hardware store where he thoughtfully selects supplies for his prisoner.? Other, rather important details are simply omitted:? we never see Toby with her in the bunker.? We are forced to watch him go about his daily business, trying his hand at pole vaulting and dating while she remains underground in the woods.? We admonish Toby- or his author- for completely omitting the little girl.? But in doing so, we can’t help but project ourselves into new perspectives that, while bizarre, feel inexplicably relatable.
By forcing the reader into the story in this way, Brandon triggers some serious reflection on repression, forgiveness, and unresolved questions in our own lives.? Citrus County puts moral logic on hold, hinting instead at a vague but sincere message of compassion.? The incompleteness of Brandon’s picture and the story’s somewhat abrupt ending place a great deal of creative and empathic responsibility on the reader.? Neither because of nor despite its odd asymmetry, Citrus County is something to behold: it presents a new kind of language for storytelling, an innovative challenge to the ways we relate to ourselves and others.
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