Innocence Lost
By Daniel Handler
Published New York Times: July 9, 2010

CITRUS COUNTY
By John Brandon
215 pp. McSweeney’s Rectangulars. $22

Nothing conforms to expectations like a novel that subverts expectations. John Brandon’s terrific new novel, “Citrus County,” opens with a slap in the face to the adage that an author ought to identify his hero by having him do something nice for a kid:

“Toby stood and brushed his hands together, cleaning them of the gravelly dirt. He touched the boy’s shoulder. ‘Your mom doesn’t love you as much as she used to. She thinks there might be something wrong with you. Is she right? Is there something wrong with you?’ ”

To call this kind of opening subversive would vastly undersell Brandon’s novel, because what, really, is subverted by the scene? Smart, mean heroes are startling to a reader of modern literature only if the reader has not actually read any modern literature. From Philip Marlowe’s wisecracks to Alexander Portnoy’s complaints, American literature offers a barrage of good (mostly) men who say (mostly) bad things, and if you think that’s faded since feminism I have some David Gates to sell you.

The passage above displays Brandon’s strong chops — the phrase “gravelly dirt” has the beautiful obviousness of all good prose — and his sure handle on Toby, who finds ways to use all of the quick, nasty things he dreams of saying. But if a mean protagonist isn’t especially shocking these days, what’s truly subversive about “Citrus County” is that Toby is also, simultaneously, something of a sweetheart:

“He could feel himself as a kid with a ripening heart who looked forward to things, who borrowed his schemes from the same old shelves as everyone else, who loved dumbly like people were meant to.”

Such a bighearted self-image is a bit jarring alongside Toby’s heartless put-downs, but this is a character who ­slouches squarely in the middle of adolescence, a very jarring time of life, in which ignorance collides with certainty, inexperience with instinct, desire with scorn, and in which the deep need to be loved walks hand in uncomfortable hand with hatred and shame. Brandon lays out these contradictions like a sure hand of cards, imbuing Toby with traits and actions that are at complete cross-purposes but utterly complementary. It’s a subversion of our expectations of people in books — particularly adolescents, who are supposed to remind us of our own revised history — but it conforms perfectly to humanity. In other words, Toby is less like a character and more like a person.
Handler's full review at NYT.