With the first line of Heaven Is Small, Emily Schultz takes the rather unconventional approach of offing her protagonist. It’s an attention grabber to be sure, but what’s even more interesting is not that he’s floating in the cotton-candy afterlife of Peter Jackson’s wet dreams, but rather that it seems life is going on as usual. We meet Gordon Small moments after his death, an event to which he remains oblivious, as he doggedly searches for new employment.
He finds that employment as a proofreader with the Heaven Book Company, the world’s largest romance publisher. Not very long after his days are consumed by sultry sultans and tempestuous virgins, Gordon starts to realize that something is quite wrong with Heaven Inc. (beyond its questionable creative output), and eventually surmises that not only is he dead, but so are all his coworkers, and that they are all unwitting slaves to Heaven’s corporate agenda.
Gordon Small himself is fairly unremarkable. Pre-mortem, he was washed up by middle age — a joke shop owner, failed writer, and melancholy divorcee without a dash of personal drive or engrossing eccentricity. He makes the everyman look like an overachiever. But as he formulates a plan to take Heaven [...]
