John Brandon’s “Citrus County”, available online and in bookstores throughout the Denver area, concerns the cultivation of pure evil as a bittersweet consolation prize by an outcast teen in Florida. Toby’s mysterious introversion is attractive to the more popular Shelby, who develops a crush on him. Little does she know he has kidnapped her younger sister and imprisoned her in a “bunker” he’s found in the woods. While he never assaults the girl, he is erratic about her feeding and upkeep. Complicating matters, a teacher named Mr. Hibma, unsure about his validity as such, is entertaining fantasies of murdering a colleague in a postal exchange with Callie’s mysterious aunt in Iceland. The very same mysterious aunt she’s just begun communicating with herself!
Brandon’s writing is electric and effective throughout “Citrus County”, It’s a McSweeney’s Rectangular, part of a series which has included writers like Robert Coover and Deb Olin Unferth. The subject matter couldn’t be darker but the quality of the writing is so fresh and satisfying the experience of reading it is uplifiting. Not since James Gunn’s The Toy Collector have I been so impressed with a work of new fiction.
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