40 by Alan Heathcock

Published by Farar, Straus and Giroux/MCD on August 2, 2022

A beginning and ending of moderate interest sandwich a dull middle that offers almost nothing of interest. But for the protagonist’s wings, 40 begins like a standard dystopian tale. Mazzy Goodwin views her job as protecting her little sister, but she’s awful at that job. In her regular Army gig, Mazzy is also protecting West Texas from the Novae Terra, a religious cult that became a movement that birthed an insurrection. The cult’s leader is Jo Sam, who might or might not be a space alien. The Novae Terra gives a boatload of cash and a lifetime income to its initiates, provided they wear a white-sleeved uniform and carry an assault rifle. The Novae Terra have created an elite military force known as the Pearl.

A shockingly incompetent government can’t seem to identify the source of Novae Terra’s wealth, but it sees the results. Novae Terra has acquired much of the country’s farmland and has poisoned the rest of it, giving itself control over the nation’s food supply. Novae Terra has promised to create a world that is free of suffering, but only initiates benefit from that pledge. Jo Sam knows that most people will sell their soul to avoid even a day of hunger. Novae Terra distributes food from rural churches while its drones bomb cities. The government seems powerless to do anything about it.

Jo Sam trades on the reality that weak-minded people will believe any stupid conspiracy theory if it appears on multiple websites and feeds into their underlying anger. Claims that the government is trying to starve American citizens to enslave and control them and that the president eats babies (sound familiar?) have contributed to anti-government sentiment.

Jo Sam appears to be a drunk who likes to sing American Pie, making him an unlikely leader, but perhaps he attracts a following by being an ordinary guy. Or perhaps his followers are love with their conspiracy theories and don’t care who leads them. Or perhaps the drunk is a front for the true Jo Sam.

Against this background, Mazzy’s home has been attacked. Her sister Ava Lynn has been taken by Nova Terra. An actor named Raja Garbos has defected from Novae Terra. Garbos offers to use his Nova Terra contacts to help Mazzy recover Ava Lynn. The story trudges on from there.

Most of the middle involves Mazzy’s attempt to recover Ava Lynn, which may or may not be part of a larger plan that Mazzy may or may not understand. Nova Terra promises to return Ava Lynn if she plays the role of Seraphine, the Angel of 40. The “40” refers to the Nation of 40, formerly New Los Angeles, a nation controlled by Jo Sam and Novae Terra.

Mazzy’s role in the novel is to fret about all the awful things she’s seen until she flies to a different location so she can fret some more. She is “haunted by what might have been.” What if she had studied harder or if her mother had money or if she’d watched out for her sister? All prompting me to ask, What if you stopped fretting and did something useful, or at least interesting? Most of the time, Mazzy is either showing off or hiding her wings.

Oh right, the wings. A half-baked explanation for the wings that tries to sound sciencey appears near the novel’s end, but it’s a crock. It’s better to view this as a fantasy with a winged protagonist whose magic wings represent angelic purity of heart. Or something.

Alan Heathcock’s prose strives to be poetic and while it often achieves that goal, the style is too often a distracting substitute for actual storytelling. It’s fine to aim for literary prose, but Heathcock tries too hard, sometimes delivering pretension rather than beauty. “The silo’s amoebic light ever shifting, the tree’s golden leaves winking, and the odd birds ceaselessly singing, I became disoriented, not just feeling that the place was manufactured, but that the same could be said of my childhood home and maybe even for me.” This sounds like a description of someone tripping on acid, but it’s just Mazzy laying on her couch doing nothing.

Mazzy spends a lot of time doing nothing, other than feeling sorry for herself or pontificating about grief or her crisis of faith or the unfairness of human existence. Heathcock balances Mazzy’s dystopian angst with Mazzy’s little sister’s uncanny wisdom and strength because stories like this always have a little kid who sounds like an Ivy League divinity professor. I didn’t believe a moment of this story (at least after the wings appear), nor  was I drawn sufficiently into the story to generate a willing suspension of disbelief.

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