FIRST FICTION

THE HEAVEN OF MERCURY

By Brad Watson

W.W. Norton: 260 pp., $23.95

In Brad Watson’s extraordinary debut novel (he’s the author of a previous collection of stories), nearly a century of life in a Southern town is held within the ample memory of octogenarian Finus Bates. Finus is the gimlet-eyed editor of the Mercury, Miss., Comet and does the morning slot on WCUV-AM, where he offers up his daily reveille--”Good morning in the a.m. to y’all, each and ever one of you” before slapping on a beat-up 45 of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and getting on to news of local bridge triumphs.

There’s a wonderfully casual, shambling pace to Finus and “The Heaven of Mercury.” Like the stunningly out-of-bounds obituaries that Finus writes, the book mixes whimsy and hard truth in a way that’s heartbreaking. Take, for instance, Finus’ obit for his own estranged wife: “Avis Crossweatherly Bates died last night, bitter and twisted in her body by the disappointments in her life....” Finus knows he was the source of Avis’ distress. After all, he’s been in love with her best friend, Birdie, since 1916, when he accidentally saw her do a nude cartwheel out at the swimming hole.

Mercury is the kind of place where the funeral director has inappropriate desires, where relationships are near-misses, where poker games can decide the path of a man’s life and where people grow old--and die--before our eyes. Pungently erotic, and as affectionate as it is acidic, Watson’s portrait of a town full of “dry and twisted hearts” is a perfect modern Southern gothic.

*

THE FROG KING

By Adam Davies

Riverhead: 306 pp., $13 paper

Into the ever-burgeoning pantheon of underachieving antiheroes stuck in cubicle hell steps Harry Driscoll: twentysomething editorial assistant, total screw-up. In Adam Davies’ fractured fairy tale about corporate and romantic back-stabbing in New York’s publishing world, Harry--the eternal amphibian for whom princehood is forever out of reach--contorts himself into a number of comic poses: stealing food from a Lhasa Apso at the Westminster dog show, faking an orgasm with a powerful publishing matron and singing Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” to the tune of “Gilligan’s Island.” Such a clever lad. But not clever enough for brainy Evie Goddard, his wisecracking girlfriend and sylphlike colleague at Prestige Books. “I bill Anita Loos as her spiritual grandmother,” Harry tells us, smitten. But through a reckless campaign of sloth and selfishness, Harry loses both Evie and his modest berth at Prestige, then spirals toward dangerous self-awareness: “I am the cliche. I don’t know anything about love.”

Evie won’t give him the time of day, and we wonder why we should either: The arc of Harry’s wacky unraveling is painfully familiar and overdrawn. Even so, Davies can make us laugh despite ourselves: He’s like the office cut-up who won’t stop until we give in. “The Frog King” has its many warts, but it knows how to jump too.

*

THE COLOR MIDNIGHT MADE

By Andrew Winer

Washington Square Press:

258 pp., $24

In his first novel, Andrew Winer explores the life and times of Conrad Clay, a 10-year-old boy who inhabits the kind of streetwise kids’ world we recognize from the work of S.E. Hinton. And with its simple, straight-up prose, “The Color Midnight Made” could fit right in beside any of Hinton’s books on the Young Adult shelf.

Conrad is, both literally and figuratively, colorblind: He discovers--much to his humiliation--that he can’t discern reds and greens when an eye doctor visits his school. The greater issue of color--race--is also largely invisible to him.

He’s one of the only white kids in a predominantly black neighborhood of Alameda, and he’s blissfully unaware of ethnic differences. His best friend is a black kid known as Loop, and Loop’s extended family becomes a kind of surrogate. Conrad’s own family is a mess: There’s his abusive, alcoholic Pops and his long-suffering, out-of-it Moms.

When his hard-nosed grandmother dies, Conrad becomes more isolated than ever. He spends his days skateboarding (“decking”) around the ‘hood, hanging out in a questionable locale known as Slime Canal and, after Loop abandons him for being a “squid” (uncool and white), he begins to build a pipe bomb.

Conrad is a sympathetic loner who speaks in an argot borrowed from the homeboys who offer him acceptance and yet hold him at bay. If “The Color Midnight Made” is up to its neck in billboard-sized symbolism (the character Midnight is a local blind man) and often veers into sentimentality, Conrad is a colorful narrator who opens our eyes to a fascinating pre-adolescent realm.