Further Joy

April 21, 2014
In his first collection of short stories, Brandon (A Million Heavens) puts forth 11 satisfying portraits of small-town American life and the complex lives of the people who inhabit those communities. With sprightly precision, he chronicles familiar scenes: a couple sitting on the front porch, strangers conversing at bar, neighbors chatting over the balcony. Yet behind these quaint images of quotidian life exists a common human desire for excitement, purpose, and passion. In many of the stories, characters go to extreme ends to maintain their images, create new ones, or realize their imagined lives. Some indulge in illegal schemes to regain lost wealth ("The Favorite"); others simply reflect upon the lives they've made for themselves ("The Picnickers"). While Brandon's language is accessible and humorous, at times it cannot relieve the drabness of the circumstances he's portraying. The collection does have stories that contain mysterious happeningsâstrange objects appear out of nowhere in one character's home in "The Differing Views," friends go missing in "Palatka," and in "The Inland News" past murder cases resurfaceâbut these stories are less successful. Brandon is at his best when transforming the unremarkable into something worth giving a second glance.

May 15, 2014
Following three novels (A Million Heavens, 2012, etc.), Brandon offers his first story collection: 11 offbeat, open-ended tales in which unmoored people make impulsive decisions."Palatka" is representative. Pauline and Mal are neighbors in a ratty rental building. The 17-year-old Mal dates recklessly, and the somewhat older Pauline feels a motherly concern, especially when Mal goes missing. But here's the twist: Envying Mal's free spirit, Pauline suddenly emulates it with a questionable bar pickup, leaving us in enjoyable suspense. Even more captivating is "The Picnickers." Kim is visiting Rita in Chicago for a week. They're old friends, mid-30s, but when Rita organizes a group of women to visit an outlet mall, Kim, who's single, prefers a field trip with Franklin, Rita's teenage son. Franklin is a supersmart loner, and the two hit it off; he drives them to an actual field, Kim faint with desire, which is inappropriate perhaps but feels wonderful. Stories that don't quite work are "The Midnight Gales" and "The Differing Views," both of which dabble in the surreal. In the former, members of a community are randomly abducted; in the latter, a guy in a condo, devastated after a breakup, sees seven human brains on the floor, presumably projections of his angst. What to do? Brandon seems at a loss about how to make use of those brains. He's at the top of his game with "The Inland News," taking a familiar storyline (police chief uses psychic to solve murder) and beautifully rearranging it. Sofia, done with college, lives with her adoptive uncle Tunsil, a kindly cop. Sofia has psychic powers, and to help her handle them, Tunsil arranges supervised interviews with suspects in a murder case. Sofia "sees" the murder, but that's far from the end, as Brandon embeds the extraordinary in an otherwise ordinary life.An impressive collection, cleareyed and penetrating.

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June 1, 2014
There's a lot to like in Brandon's (A Million Heavens, 2012) first short fiction collection. It is varied in setting, characters, and genres, intensely readable, and enormously entertaining. This master of fictional techniques, including elements of magic realism, never repeats himself, making each of the stories a distinct experience for readers. In the stunning title story, Brandon pulls off describing a group of 15-year-old girls and their fathers without giving a name to anyone in either group. The Differing Views introduces readers to the almost-broke Mitchell, deserted by his wealthy girlfriend and left in a rented condo that features seven living brains in the spare room. A deep humanity pervades these stories, which often feature adults or kids in unsettling circumstances not of their own making. In The Midnight Gales, a precocious preteen introduces his small town, a strange place without a school or a post office, where people and whole families disappear overnight. Libraries will want to purchase this book for fans of Brandon's novels and readers of literary fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)