The Heaven of Mercury: A Novel

Brad Watson

$17.80

Publication Date: August 17th, 2003

Publisher:

W. W. Norton & Company

ISBN:

9780393324655

Pages:

352

Usually Ships in 1 to 5 Days

Description

A National Book Award Finalist

Brad Watson's first novel was eagerly awaited after his breathtaking, award-winning debut collection of short stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men. In The Heaven of Mercury, Watson fulfills that literary promise with a humorous and jaundiced eye. Finus Bates has loved Birdie Wells since the day he saw her do a naked cartwheel in the woods in 1916. Later he won her at poker, lost her, then nearly won her again after the mysterious poisoning of her womanizing husband. Does Vish, the old medicine woman down in the ravine, hold the key to Birdie's elusive character? Or does Parnell, the town undertaker, whose unspeakable desires bring lust for life and death together? Or does the secret lie with some other colorful old-timer in Mercury, Mississippi, not such a small town anymore? With "graceful, patient, insightful and hilarious" prose (USA Today), Brad Watson chronicles Finus's steadfast devotion and Mercury's evolution from a sleepy backwater to a small city.

About the Author

Brad Watson (1955–2020) was the author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Heaven of Mercury and Miss Jane, and two collections of stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men and Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives. His work has been recognized by the short list and long list of the National Book Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Great Lakes New Writers Award, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Fiction (twice), the Southern Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, a National Endowment of the Arts Grant in Fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Harper Lee Award, and the Award in Letters granted by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He taught creative writing at Harvard University, the University of Alabama, and the University of Wyoming, Laramie.

Praise for The Heaven of Mercury: A Novel

[A] lushly written novel of Deep Southern dream and landscape.
— New York Times

Extraordinary…. Mixes whimsy and hard truth in a way that’s heartbreaking…. Pungently erotic, and as affectionate as it is acidic… a perfect modern southern gothic.
— Mark Rozzo - Los Angeles Times Book Review

[A] superb novel, graced with lush and exciting prose in the Southern high rhetorical tradition.
— Raleigh News and Observer

Brad Watson has set his superb second novel in a small Mississippi city near the Gulf of Mexico. The heat, damp, whisky, bigotry and family skulduggery suggest juicy Southern Gothic. Although The Heaven of Mercury is born of that tradition, it transcends its parentage.

— The Guardian

An intensity reminiscent of Faulkner, a bleak humor that recalls Flannery O’Connor, a whimsy inspired by Eudora Welty and a spontaneity suggesting prime Barry Hanna… Reading The Heaven of Mercury certainly restores one’s faith in Southern literature’s ability to startle and surprise… the risks pay off with insightful observations, dynamic relationships and scenes that crackle with tension and possibility.

— Memphis Commercial Appeal

Set in the fictional town of Mercury, Mississippi, The Heaven of Mercury offers us necrophilia, murder, a talking cat, strange goings-on with an excised human heart and a number of ghostly apparitions. Yet it encompasses far more than this; and what might have been mere gothic extravaganza becomes, in the hands of this gifted writer, a subtle and moving meditation on the themes of continuity and impermanence, love and loss.

— Independent

[A]n unforgettable story…The accidents, the disappointments, the corrections, and the secrets each life contains are woven into a deeply sympathetic portrait of small town life at its worst and best.
— The Advocate

Gimcrack storytelling...grounded by generous humanity.
— Entertainment Weekly

[Watson's] work may remind readers of William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, or Flanner O'Connor, but has a power—and a charm—all its own.
— Merle Rubin - Baltimore Sun

A vivid mythology of a small Southern town that moves to a strange, electrifying beat.
— Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Watson imbues his work with an elegance that sets it apart from the rest.
— Boston Herald

Sort of a calm wail. Each page a deep pleasure. A book at life’s pace yet somehow without any of its tedium. Only the Irish geniuses wrote like this.
— Barry Hannah, author of Airships

The Heaven of Mercury is a tragicomic story of missed opportunities and unjust necessities that wittily explores the souls of its highly colorful cast of characters. It is suffused with an almost savage lyricism that illumines every accurate detail and nuance of place and speech. The light this novel casts is so brilliant it makes even its own shadows luminous. Brad Watson has struck a fresh and thrilling note.

— Fred Chappell, author of Dagon

The best thing to come out of the South since A Confederacy of Dunces.

— Gregory Rabassa, translator of One Hundred Years of Solitude

Vividly peopled, full of surprises, The Heaven of Mercury is a deeply satisfying novel.

— Margot Livesey, author of The Boy in the Field

As mythic and miraculous as Faulkner and Marquez. Amazingly original, and a sublime delight for the lucky readers who get their hands on it. A novel so fine you don’t want it to ever end.
— Larry Brown, author of Father and Son

Watson traces a dark but resonant journey through the world of the Southern gothic in his bleak, touching debut novel…
— Publishers Weekly

A seamless interweaving of narrative, remembrance, dreaming, and fantasy unifies a wealth of colorful tragicomic material—in a superb first novel by the Alabama storywriter.
— Kirkus Reviews

A fast-paced, myth-echoing, tragic-comic commentary on our modern lives.
— Bookpage