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Arkansas (McSweeney's Rectangulars) [Hardcover]

John Brandon
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)


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Book Description

March 1, 2008 McSweeney's Rectangulars
Arkansas is a biting first novel full of wet T-shirt contests, illicit drugs, and cross-country road trips. There are the days: the dappled grounds, the aimless yardwork, the hours in the booth giving directions to families in SUVs. And then there are the nights: crisscrossing the South with illicit goods, the shifty deals in dingy trailers, the vague orders from a boss they've never met. Before Kyle and Swin can recognize how close to paradise they are in this neglected state park in southern Arkansas, the lazy peace is shattered with a shot. Night blends into day. Dead bodies. Crooked superiors. Suspicious associates. It's on-the-job training, with no time for slow learning, bad judgment, or foul luck.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Brandon introduces his main characters gradually in his quirky debut about a bunch of rootless drifters who form an unstable drug-distribution network in Arkansas: Swin Ruiz, who pulls his first scam before dropping out of college; Kyle Ribb, a shoplifter who stumbles on a job as a courier; and mysterious Ken Hovan (aka Froggy or Frog), who begins with bootleg tapes but graduates to run the shadowy organization. Tangential characters include a middleman, Pat Bright, who oversees Swin and Ruiz in their nebulous and phony cover jobs in a state park, and a black woman known only as Her, who passes packets and instructions to the couriers. As Swin and Kyle try to puzzle out how to survive in a crumbling organization, their futile attempts to create some semblance of a normal life evoke only pathos. Not evil as such, these unsympathetic people simply fall into a rut that leads inevitably to violence and death. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“John Brandon’s remarkable first novel will blow away a certain readership. . . . Arkansas rants against the machine in a voice combining Raymond Chandler’s side-of-the-mouth noir with Quentin Tarantino’s gleeful-psychopath wit and Mark Twain’s episodic romance of the journey.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Brandon’s premier novel is a must for those who love the criminal and the stern yet dark optimism of the existential. His vision of Arkansas is unique, his wit is sharp, and the sympathy he has for his characters is genuine. For all the dark alleys Brandon explores, both physically and psychologically, Arkansas’s power rests in its redefining and restructuring of the criminal’s only hope: family.” —PopMatters

“Add novelist John Brandon to your list of hipster-sanctioned must-reads . . . Brandon’s writing is so sparse it sometimes feels blasé, but the tension between his hard-boiled prose and his characters’ appealing naiveté makes the novel work.” —The Portland Mercury
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 224 pages
  • Publisher: McSweeney's; First Edition edition (March 1, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1932416900
  • ISBN-13: 978-1932416909
  • Product Dimensions: 0.9 x 6.3 x 8.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #503,544 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

That said, I thought Arkansas was an outstanding book. Jon K  |  1 reviewer made a similar statement
Here's hoping he finishes a second book soon and achieves recognition. Noel  |  1 reviewer made a similar statement
Pretty much unreadable for me. Rich__T  |  1 reviewer made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars well-done crime novel February 12, 2008
Format:Hardcover
This is a rather quirky, often compelling tale of four men--Swin, Kyle, Bright, and Froggy, and Swin's girlfriend Johnna. Swin and Kyle work for Bright, who in turn works for Froggy, although at times the exact chain of command seems a bit fuzzy. The primary activity of the group is moving illegal drugs--Swin and Kyle are sent to Florida, to Louisiana, to Texas in old cars with a stash of drugs and return with, say $50K in cash to Arkansas. We're not talking TV glamour here, no high living, no hobnobbing in glitzy Miami bars. Froggy is careful, and runs his operation almost like a communist cell: Swin and Kyle never know just who Froggy is, and it may be that Bright doesn't know either. But it pays the bills, if you don't mind living in run-down house trailers.

It's gritty storytelling, somewhere between Larry Brown, Harry Crews, and William Gay. You won't see any exciting car chases, but there is death. $50K may not seem like a lot to a Kenneth Lay or a John Gotti, but here it can be a major temptation. As you read the book you get the feeling that there is not going to be a nice happy ending: this is not the kind of life that fairy tales are made of.

Brandon does not--as of yet--have the lyrical writing of a William Gay or a Cormac McCarthy, as in Gay's Provinces of Night or McCarthy's Child of God. He does not--as of yet--have the fine sense of pace as you'll see in Crews' brilliant Feast of Snakes. But he certainly has the grit right, and that puts him in the Crews/Brown school. So this is a very good debut.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Arkansas is a great read! A fantastic combination of well-developed characters, intriguing plot and unbelievably clever, witty dialogue. The story of Kyle and Swin is an incredible saga that includes everything from sinister encounters with the South's drug underworld to comical exchanges with the many great southern characters found along the way. Brandon keeps you guessing, laughing and genuinely entertained right up to the last page.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Looking for a sequel July 21, 2008
Format:Hardcover
Between 1974 and 1998 in the southern US, Kyle and Swin are drifters, who run drugs for others. The rest about the duo escapes symbolism and labels. They take jobs as rangers in a state park. On the surface, they direct visitors, maintain the park, and see to animals. Below the surface, the park is a cover for the operations of a drug kingpin and the malfeasance he plots. A look into the swamps in the park might uncover sunken bodies. When their aliases and duties as rangers foster friendship between them and give them self-respect from park visitors, they begin the shift from hoodlums to guys for whom the reader can feel interest and empathy. A nurse in a clinic, Johnna, joins them. They set up house, adopt an aura of stability, and carry out with eagerness the tasks of a ranger. The normality is broken by phone calls that tell them where to make the next run for the kingpin, a person without a name or a location. Johnna presents Swin with the possibility of fatherhood, a circumstance that might be construed as weakness in the armor that Swin like Kyle presents to others for self-defense. The climax arrives when Kyle commits a murder that Swin interprets as an extravagance instead of a necessity. When the action places Swin and Kyle in the bathhouse with thugs, the reader fears that the thugs will harm Swin, whereas the toughness in Kyle inspires fear in the thugs. The author Brandon knows how to balance horror with relief, terror and humor. He makes the down-to-earth spout philosophy and the brusque speak lines of poetry. If the reader thinks he/she can predict what characters will do or how they will reply, he/she will learn that the characters are studies in contradiction: heat and ice with regard to emotions; nobility and baseness with regard to ethics.... Read more ›
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Buckle up! June 24, 2008
Format:Hardcover
I've mostly been reading nonfiction this year; Arkansas, however, made me VERY glad to have tried something new. Between the book's immediate, taut, non-stop (and sometimes gruesome (and I mean that in a good way-- I still can't look at a coat hanger the same way)) action and its hilariously twisted characters, it very quickly roped me in. In terms of style... I don't get out as much as I'd like, so I guess the best I could come up with today is that Brandon strikes me as a southern-fried, Americanized Brookmyre. Very much looking forward to his next one.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars fantastic! May 2, 2008
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I could not put this book down. I had read the reviews of it and knew it was a drug-runner book, which sounded interesting enough, but what the reviewers didn't mention is that the writing in this book is amazing: hilarious, startling, fast, and cutting. Completely engaging on both a narrative level and at the level of the sentence, first to last page.
BRAVO!
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12 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Arkansas is a book that is unapologetic about breaking rules. It's full of unimportant details, irrelevant backstories with dialogues that don't always move the plot, a narrator who speaks in third person, but also in second, and then finally in first. Arkansas throws you off center, destroys your sense of balance. It makes you struggle and curse at your own inability to determine who exactly the good guy is.

And yet, you tolerate it. You tolerate it because it's different, because you can tell it's doing something new, just like Robert O'Conner's 'Buffalo Soldiers.' The same old elements are being combined in ways you never thought were possible, in ways that aren't fair. You're just starting to get hopelessly disoriented, pissed off, fed up, when John Brandon switches to second person. You. `You, Ken Hovan,' he says, and suddenly you don't get to be a confused reader anymore, but rather a confused character, inside the book, and you're not just watching the action, but in fact, you're the mastermind, the Godfather, the drug dealer who is responsible for everything. It's all your doing. Your fault. Your problem.

Once that happens, it's harder to put down. You want to know what it is that you, Ken Hovan, have been up to. So what is this book about? Objectively, it's about a bunch of drug dealers, criminals, and murderers who clearly weren't meant to be drug dealers, criminals, or murderers. They're too smart or too dumb, too sensitive or too insensitive, too comical and too harmless for the brutal, twisted, and gross things that they do. They like to cook. They have families. They fantasize and exercise and waste time in front of the tube.

You expect whores, torture scenes, overdoses and big cities from drug dealer books.
... Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars Life on the buttom
Extremely interesting. You come to like these children living on the buttom of everything. Amazing story from a vast country
Published 2 months ago by Erik
3.0 out of 5 stars Has a certain somethin'
that made it entertaining. But I won't be reading Citrus County, as Arkansas didn't have somethin' enough. Read more
Published 18 months ago by HRD
1.0 out of 5 stars Too many stars
Unfortunately Amazon forces you to give a minimum of 1 star. I read this book before Citrus County, and although it was better than CC, that's not saying much.
Published 21 months ago by Red
1.0 out of 5 stars Didn't finish it
Pretty much unreadable for me. Read Citrus County by same author first and found that very odd. Started this one and decided not to waste my time.
Published 23 months ago by Rich__T
5.0 out of 5 stars Who are you, John Brandon?
I plan to read everything Brandon writes, even if I have to be selective about recommending him to others. Read more
Published on January 10, 2011 by Deborah Limerick
5.0 out of 5 stars One of my favorite reads this year
There is a wonderful kind of irony in reading about characters that believe they are far more clever than they are, and feeling clever for having taken note of it. Read more
Published on December 1, 2010 by Jon K
1.0 out of 5 stars No Good Guys
I need someone to root for. Even the good guys in this novel weren't admirable. Yes, they were much sinned against. But that doesn't give them the right to waste their lives. Read more
Published on August 31, 2010 by Cecile Farber
5.0 out of 5 stars We're not in (Ar)kansas anymore
Kyle, a young man and a drifter, gets involved in crime early on, stealing, petty crime, and then moves on to become a drug mule for someone called Frog. Read more
Published on May 18, 2010 by Noel
5.0 out of 5 stars book of the year
arkansas is really fast moving and action packed (eyeballs being gouged out and cars being sunk into swamps), yet it doesn't feel rushed. Read more
Published on June 5, 2008 by hector lynne
4.0 out of 5 stars arkansas
Enjoyable reading. Differant style of writing, kept me interested most of the time.Sometimes more descriptive than necessary.
Published on May 8, 2008 by James Lee Robinson
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