Arkansas

by John Brandon

[jamiereadthis]

Count me as a newly minted fan of John Brandon. There are the books you read, and then the books you read, and then the books that take up residence, that shoulder in with their noise and their luggage and eat and breathe and sleep under your roof. I read Arkansas in the grass, in the sand by the water, by the flat, empty hotel pool, all in the glass-eyed heat of the southern summer. It bristles with the same dark energy of boredom, cosmic and comic and criminal. The languid, lazy south; the placid domesticity of a wild life of crime.

Entirely coincidentally, the New York Times Book Review just came out to give Brandon’s newest novel some seriously high praise. Meaning I now get to shamelessly crib Daniel Handler, as he finds in Citrus County what I found in Arkansas:

“John Brandon joins the ranks of [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.”

All that’s left is to change my review this much: withhold that last fifth star for John Brandon’s next.

First read July 2010

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June 2011:

At this rate I’m making room for this book every summer. It’s maybe not even summer until Arkansas comes shouldering in. I guess what I’m saying is, this is just my thing and I loved it even more this time than last.