Book: A Million Heavens by John Brandon
Reviewed by: Steven
When I first encountered A Million Heavens on our bookshelves, I thought to myself, “Oh, awesome. Another McSweeney’s book is trying to impress me with its fancy binding.” Then I saw who the author was, and my jaw dropped.
Over the past few years, John Brandon has written two of the most ambitious and intense southern gothic character dramas I have ever furrowed my brow at, and each has broken my heart and conquered my psyche in its own unique way. Arkansas recounts the agonizing downfall of two unlikely criminal partners as they try to stay afloat in a churning sea of deception and shifting alliances, and Citrus County pits a set of bored and precocious antiheroes unwittingly against one another as they vainly attempt to assert their identities in a dispassionate world. Each is a narrative experiment in existential angst in its own right, and A Million Heavens is no exception. However, where John Brandon’s characters previously languished and stagnated in their humid environmental ennui, the ensemble cast that populates A Million Heavens takes the leap of faith and outright rebels against an antagonistic destiny, refusing their assigned fates and forging ahead to face whatever peril confronts them.
An omniscient wolf breaks the Prime Directive, straying from its rounds to alternately attack and protect the citizens of a New Mexico town. A piano prodigy lies helpless in a coma while a misguided band of devotees stands vigil. A car crash casualty refuses to compose music in Purgatory as his cell grows smaller and less hospitable. A reluctant mayor watches his town slip away from him. A guitar player wages war against a rival band. A transplant severs all contact with the outside world as she tries to conceive a child with a man who angrily scans the skies for extraterrestrial life. An elderly gas station owner watches it all until he loses interest.
A Million Heavens is a brilliant and cathartic work of fiction that concedes magical realism in exchange for a realistically dull and oppressive world of everyday fantasy. The desert town of Lofte, New Mexico is brought to life with the intertwined defiance of its citizens, and John Brandon makes this desolate alien world feel exactly like home.
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