The Heaven of Mercury: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Hell on earth is trying to get through this book.
Review: I can not remember being MORE disappointed with a novel. Mr. Watson's run-on approach to describing events did not pull me in but bored me. The main character, Finus, spends his whole life desiring from afar a woman (Birdie) for no other given reason than he saw her naked in the woods when he was 13 years old. There is only a passing reference to her being pretty- and none to her being particularly kind or fun.
Mr. Watson's interpretation of a relationship between a black domestic and her white employer was embarrassingly lacking. No nuisances, no subtleties.
My last example of the degree to which this novel is pathetic is that the undertaker in this novel has a thing for having sex with dead people, or people who act dead. Very unoriginal!

Rating:
Summary: Subtle storytelling, gorgeous prose
Review: Many of the negative reviews here seem focused on the disjointed narrative or - unbelievably - a supposed lack of plot. Perhaps those readers would be better served by the latest Patricia Cornwell novel, complete with inciting incident, rising action, climax, etc., all told in linear fashion, each event telegraphed to the reader by the event before it. I don't doubt that these same readers struggled through "plotless" books like The Sound and the Fury or Joseph Heller's Something Happened.

Watson is a subtle storyteller who reveals the truth about his characters through a few well-chosen stories from their lives, each rendered in pitch-perfect prose. He does not feel compelled to give us a summation of each character's entire life history, nor does he show us the entire internal world of every person in the book, and for that he is beaten up by readers who apparently are unfamiliar with Hemingway's iceberg principle.
As to the charge that the relationship between a black housemaid and her employer was drawn without subtlety, nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, this was one of the most nuanced and deeply-felt examples of human connection (or lack thereof) in the novel.
Most of the readers who lambasted the story in the novel at least gave Watson credit for his brilliant writing style, so I won't add anything there.
If you treasure southern literature, stories of abiding love, or ruminations on life, death and the hereafter, order this book now.

Rating:
Summary: should have been a collection of short stories
Review: Nicely crafted, but ultimately unsatisfying. The themes are substantial - sex, death, racism, longing, opportunity lost - and Brad Watson strikes a rich vein when exploring the porous threshold between the living and the dead, but the characters never come to life and the writing style often is too light to support the rich, dark subject matter.

Rating:
Summary: This Book Gets to the Heart.
Review: Not many novelists can get to the heart of the reader as does Brad Watson in The Heaven of Mercury. Of modern writers David Adams Richards, Richard Flanagan and Roth in his recent American trilogy have been able to achieve this by their understanding of their locale and the intricacies of the human heart. William Faulkner understood the place of home in all his great works.

What Brad Watson achieves in this brilliant first novel is simply how the place we are brought up in shapes our lives. The attitudes and prejudices are all there. How do we deal with them? If you read this book you will get more than a clue. As a plus it is a great story

This novel is not, as some of your reviewers have suggested, Souhern Gothic but great literature. How it failed to win the National Book Award is beyond me. But I guesss books that don't pussyfoot around are not rewarded in the Bush years.

Rating:
Summary: SO MANY HEAVENS...
Review: The concept of heaven - whether one believes it exists or not - is one that has as many facets as there are souls to discuss it. Alice Sebold depicted one vision of it beautifully and brilliantly in her novel THE LOVELY BONES - Brad Watson has given us another literary treasure that touches the reader's heart just as deeply in his first novel, THE HEAVEN OF MERCURY.

Watson's book is, of course, about much more than an individual's vision and experience of heaven - it is a finely wrought, rich tapestry that gives us a living, breathing view of Southern life (although so much of what its characters feel and experience is universal), one that touches on emotions and truths so deeply, yet gently, that we know them as if they were our own. His writing is awesomely beautiful, yet honest and forthright - there is no superficiality here, and I never got the feeling that even a single word was put there to impress the reader. Watson is telling a story that he feels in his soul - and has filled this novel with characters that are so real that their presence can be felt in the room.

One of the beauties of his prose is how easily it rolls along, bearing not only the story and characters, but the reader as well, along with it. I found myself re-reading many a passage in wonder, amazed that I had traveled its length to arrive at the end, almost unaware of the journey. In developing his characters in the reader's mind's eye, the author employs incredibly distinctive voices - distinctive not only for their speech and thoughts, but in the narrative surrounding them.

What seems at first to be a surreal quality to Watson's writing reveals itself, upon further consideration, to actually be more of an `ultra-reality' - people, events, emotions and settings are placed so close to the reader's perception that they seem blurred and bent, adding to the mystical/mythical qualities of the tale. The characters' lives are seen not just through their own memories, but also through the memories of those around them, giving varied slants on events they hold in common - personal v. universal memory. Watson's depiction of the `heaven' or `hell' we experience after death - those of specific souls often overlapping - is presented in much the same fashion. It's a concept that might seem self-contradictory until one sees it laid out so beautifully and skillfully, in the context of the story - viewed thusly, it makes perfect and natural sense.

The story itself centers on the life of one Finus Bates - from his early years to the end of his life - and his life-long love for Birdie Wells. Theirs is a deep, close friendship - and a star-crossed love. The book follows their lives - and the lives of other citizens of the fictional town of Mercury, Mississippi - in non-chronological but perfectly sensible order, through friendships, marriages (each to another partner), trials, tribulations, and the ins and outs of everyday life. Far from being a boring picture of mundane lives in a small Southern town, THE HEAVEN OF MERCURY is a luminous portrayal of memorable individuals living through times of great change - from the early 20th century to the present day. As in most stories set in the South in these decades, race is definitely one of the players - and Watson tells it like it was (and is), doing so with great respect and love for all of those involved. As ugly as some of the things that have happened around the race issue might be, they must be viewed in an honest light if we are to learn from them. Only when we settle with the past can we advance.

THE HEAVEN OF MERCURY is an incredible reading experience - one that I can heartily recommend, full to the brim with amazingly good writing. I first read an excerpt from this novel (the chapter `The dead girl') that was included in the wonderful collection STORIES FROM THE BLUE MOON CAFÉ. I subsequently read Brad Watson's short story collection LAST DAYS OF THE DOG MEN (both highly recommended as well). The talent and promise I saw in these didn't lead me astray - this is an amazing novel (especially for a first effort), and I look forward to reading more.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful descriptive power but...
Review: The residents of Mercury, Mississippi are well known to each other, the once brilliant, but now fading remnants of a town that flourished at the beginning of the 20thCentury, now cast aside by progress. The main street of Mercury, formerly the center of activity, now has empty stores, windows boarded and shuttered like the closed eyes of those who have passed away.

But Finus Bates is comfortable in Mercury, lived here all of his 89 years, met the love of his life, married another, and outlived both. In anecdotal chapters, Finus leads us through the streets of a Mercury passed, when everyone was young and unaware of the breath of eternity. Finus works at the local newspaper, lovingly typing obituaries for old friends and acquaintances, and hosts a late night radio show, where he reminisces late into the night. Throughout the novel, Finus' voice is as comforting and familiar as the sound of rain pelting the windows.

Other characters, written by Watson in true Southern Gothic fashion, are introduced in chapters interspersed with the main drama. These quirky characters have their own appeal, the undertaker with a deep dark secret of his own, the black maid haunted by the wooden dummy locked in a shed and old Vish, maker of spells and potions in the darkest woods.

In the summer of 1916, Mercury is peopled with young folks on the cusp of adulthood. Still believing in the future, they are full of promise and hope. That summer Finus falls hopelessly in love with Birdie Wells, while the intrepid Avis Crossweatherly has different ideas for him. Through a lack of assertiveness, Finus loses Birdie to Earl Urquhart. Earl is handsome, arrogant and successful, but, unfortunately, a ladies man. Meanwhile, through her own clever machinations, Avis lures Finus into a marital partnership, in Finus' words, "as a long and unhappy marriage, and more than thirty years would pass before he would truly escape it... what he came to see as a long journey through a tangled wood." Looking back on his experience with Avis, Finus considers that they may have done the cruelest thing of all, lived their lives, not in love or hate, but with indifference to each other.

Like Thornton Wilder's Our Town, The Heaven of Mercury is a paean to small-town America, especially the South. Mercury is an example of the simple life, the face of downtown Anywhere, USA before industrialization and invention forever alter demographics. The people in Watson's novel have lived through almost a century, witnessed immeasurable changes in the name of progress. And although Finus never divorces Avis, his love for Birdie is constant.

For anyone at all nostalgic for the long-ago days at the beginning of a new century, when the sounds of nature were louder than the roar of traffic, The Heaven of Mercury is an excellent choice. Finus is an astute guide to the past, with his dignified gentleman's ways, relating the memories of a romantic young man full of dreams. At a time when everything is filtered through the white noise of television, this beautiful novel quietly opens a door to a past that no longer exists, where faded photographs come to life, if only for a while. Luan Gaines/2003.

Rating:
Summary: Now Listen Up
Review: This is one of the most beautiful books I've read in ages. Based on some of the reviews below, this is definitely a love it or hate it book. I'll tell you this much: if you love good fiction with pitch-perfect prose and dead-on dialogue, then this is the novel for you. Everyone says it reminds them of Faulkner or Marquez but this is completely original writing that gets to the meat of the human heart (no pun intended, as a human heart is actually a pivotal plot point). If you like formulaic writing and stitled dialogue this is not the book for you. You should read books like this, though. They're good for you. One of the best books of the year, if not THE best.

Rating:
Summary: Subtle storytelling, gorgeous prose
Review: What do you say about a book whose crowning literary moment is the description of an 89-year-old man taking a dump in the bathroom? Then there's this lovely image of a horse: "A long, slow fart flabbered from the proud black lips of Dan's hole, and the smoke from it too trailed off in the air." Curiously, intellectuals praise The Heaven of Mercury for how it "illumines every accurate detail" and delivers "just-right words."

The Heaven of Mercury is part love story, part murder mystery, and part taste of the South. These parts combine into a dull and dreary text. The love story offers no payoff to the reader. The murder mystery fails outright. It is so loosely developed, there are no clues for the reader to pick up. In the end the omniscient narrator just tells some back story to explain the mystery. As for the taste of the South, it is bland at best.

The Heaven of Mercury does make a solid showing as a feminist text. In this book the men are weak, the women are strong.

Finally, The Heaven of Mercury is yet another example of how the academic mind disdains plot. Here the story is not told in a linear fashion. A character who dies in one chapter may be alive in the next. This book of 333 pages piddles along to a dubious crescendo (the bathroom scene) near page 200, then for the next 133 pages the author fills in gaps left by the first 200 pages.

Rating:
Summary: If this is heaven, give me hell
Review: What do you say about a book whose crowning literary moment is the description of an 89-year-old man taking a dump in the bathroom? Then there's this lovely image of a horse: "A long, slow fart flabbered from the proud black lips of Dan's hole, and the smoke from it too trailed off in the air." Curiously, intellectuals praise The Heaven of Mercury for how it "illumines every accurate detail" and delivers "just-right words."

The Heaven of Mercury is part love story, part murder mystery, and part taste of the South. These parts combine into a dull and dreary text. The love story offers no payoff to the reader. The murder mystery fails outright. It is so loosely developed, there are no clues for the reader to pick up. In the end the omniscient narrator just tells some back story to explain the mystery. As for the taste of the South, it is bland at best.

The Heaven of Mercury does make a solid showing as a feminist text. In this book the men are weak, the women are strong.

Finally, The Heaven of Mercury is yet another example of how the academic mind disdains plot. Here the story is not told in a linear fashion. A character who dies in one chapter may be alive in the next. This book of 333 pages piddles along to a dubious crescendo (the bathroom scene) near page 200, then for the next 133 pages the author fills in gaps left by the first 200 pages.

Rating:
Summary: INTERESTING AND WELL DONE
Review: Wonderful discriptive writing. It takes a bit to get use to the author's syntax and punctuation peculiarities, but once you get over that, it is rather fun and refreshing. This work does have it's own rhythm and I rather like that. I like the way the author has take very "ordinary" people, and told a story, proving again, that there is merit and a tale in every life. I suppose many may be a bit put off as the the fact that the characters are not all that different from you and me, but that is one of the strong point of the work, I feel. I could not find one character in the book, that I have not meet in "real life" and that was kind of nice. I highly recommend this read and hope we get more of the same.