A review by quadruploni
Arkansas by John Brandon

3.0

Unpredictably, what I ultimately liked best about Arkansas was its plotting. Early on I couldn't generate much empathy for protagonists Swin and Kyle, so that they seemed to blur together in their motives even as the author took pains to distinguish them. The introduction of the character addressed as "you, Ken Hovan" only made matters worse. Things improved, on the contrary, with the introduction of Johnna. Soon I was drawn in by the turns the lives of these characters took and found convincing the arbitrariness of the events that put them in a new, worse, situation. As Brandon built up the backstories of those arrayed against them, I looked forward to the inevitable face-off between the parties. That I found the final section of the novel less enjoyable than I had hoped was I think primarily due to the increasing role played by a character whose mode of presentation I found so unsatisfactory: the use of the second-person in these chapters, while modestly motivated by the fact that "your" identity is a secret to the protagonists as well, would seem to be an otherwise pointless distraction from the story. (A concluding switch to the first-person for this character does nothing to salvage the experiment.) Finally, the book's prose--generally clipped short but occasionally sending up breathless periods with multiple subordinate clauses--is adequate but never seems to find quite the right register. Swin's bookworm-redneck conflicts color the entire book, and so at times dark humor shades into cynical callousness, or tenderness into sentimentality. I came to care about these characters--every one of them but, significantly, "you"--and occasionally wanted to get them out of this novel into the hands of a narrator with more control over his prose, or perhaps into those of a director, because Arkansas would make a great film.