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Heaven
Hailed as a bold foray into new literary territory, Kawakami¡¯s novel is told in the voice of a 14-year-old student who subjected to relentless torment for having a lazy eye. Instead of resisting, the boy chooses to suffer in complete resignation. The only person who understands what he is going through is a female classmate who suffers similar treatment at the hands of her tormentors.
These raw and realistic portrayals of bullying are counterbalanced by textured exposition of the philosophical and religious debates concerning violence to which the weak are subjected.
Kawakami's simple yet profound new work stands as a dazzling testament to her literary talent. There can be little doubt that it has cemented her reputation as one of the most important young authors working to expand the boundaries of contemporary Japanese literature.
These raw and realistic portrayals of bullying are counterbalanced by textured exposition of the philosophical and religious debates concerning violence to which the weak are subjected.
Kawakami's simple yet profound new work stands as a dazzling testament to her literary talent. There can be little doubt that it has cemented her reputation as one of the most important young authors working to expand the boundaries of contemporary Japanese literature.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published September 2, 2009
5,107 people are currently reading
121k people want to read
About the author
Mieko Kawakami
64?books7,751?followersMieko Kawakami (´¨ÉÏδӳ×Ó, born in August 29, 1976) is a Japanese singer and writer from Osaka.
She was awarded the 138th Akutagawa Prize for promising new writers of serious fiction (2007) for her novel Chichi to Ran (Èé¤ÈÂÑ) (Breasts and Eggs).
Kawakami has released three albums and three singles as a singer.
She was awarded the 138th Akutagawa Prize for promising new writers of serious fiction (2007) for her novel Chichi to Ran (Èé¤ÈÂÑ) (Breasts and Eggs).
Kawakami has released three albums and three singles as a singer.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 12,152 reviews
February 17, 2025
¡®Because we¡¯re always in pain, we know exactly what it means to hurt somebody else.¡¯
In the past year I¡¯ve really come to appreciate Mieko Kawakami. Heralded by , I eagerly dove in and have not been continuously astonished by her ouveur and literary punk-rock expressions of ideas. Heaven is the third novel translated to English by Japanese singer turned poet turned author Mieko Kawakami, who;s much praised¡ªand deservedly so¡ªBreasts and Eggs topped almost every Best Of list for 2020 (Heaven was shortlisted for the ), and is an extraordinary little novel that really highlights her major themes. Told from the perspective of a young boy who has faced heartbreaking and tragic levels of bullying, Kawakami delves into issues of trauma and how various ideologies on meaning in life address trauma. Deftly positioning the issues as a larger critique on society, ableism, and classism, Kawakami crafts a marvelously engaging book that is both heartbreaking and illuminating.
¡®If we¡¯re weak, our weakness has real meaning.¡¯
Published in Japan in 2009 and just now translated into English by Sam Bett and David Boyd, Heaven predates both Ms Ice Sandwich and the completed two-part Breasts and Eggs (though not the original novella) and reads like a thematic Big Bang of her primary ideas. The story follows a brutally bullied young boy and his growing friendship with classmate, Kojima, who is also a primary target for abuse in the classroom. While the narrator comes across as weak and complaint to his violent detriment, Kojima is passive to abuse in a different way. With a voice that ¡®reminds me of a 6B (pencil),¡¯ he says to her in a letter, ¡®soft and rigid at the same time., Kojima is a bit of an icon of ascetic resistance icon who believes their suffering has a deeper meaning of real strength and that they are an avenue to teach their bullies a lesson.
Through the emotional journey that explores the perils of a relationship forged on shared suffering, Kawami demonstrates one of her most impressive literary attributes: creating heartrending juvenile characters that read as so lifelike and empathetic you want to give them a hug. Such as Midoriko in B&E or the narrator in Ms Ice Sandwich, Kawakami truly shines when examining youthful emotions in a way that would make her novels a perfect crossover for YA readers.
¡®My eye was behind all my problems.¡¯
Kojimo has an interesting philosophy on bullying and the reasons behind it. ¡®It¡¯s a painful thing, I know¡¯ she says to the narrator over his eye, which is a frequent impetus for teasing, ¡®but it¡¯s also made you who you are.¡¯ Their signs, as she calls them, that makes them targets, are also what defines them, according to her, due to how it regulates them in the social hierarchy. There is a conversation where the narrator wishes he could be like a regular object the bullies ignore, but Kojima cuts him off to say ¡®that¡¯s what we are to them.¡¯ They are objects of torture objectified by their aberations, he for his eye and she for appearing dirty and poor (¡®you can look as good as anyone else,¡¯ Kojima points out, ¡®it doesn¡¯t even matter if you¡¯re poor,¡¯ which is one of the many doorways into class conflict discourse this novel examines).
The way a person can become an Other in society is analyzed in the broader scheme of her works, but also how this happens by being objectified. Physical traits aren¡¯t a valid indication of a person, but it becomes such a large part of the way people choose to see us and value us. Breasts and Eggs scrutinizes how use value in labor is contingent on physical attributes, such as Makiko undergoing breast enhancement surgery despite a large price barrier for the purpose of making her more profitable as a bar employee. Similar to the eye issue in Heaven is the titular character of Ms Ice Sandwich, who underwent facial surgery in hopes of better job placement due to physical beauty (patriarchal gaze abound) but a botched surgery left her with giant eyes that make her an outcast and target for scorn. The use of eyes for this social investigation is brilliant, as eyes are the way we perceive the world around us and are ironically the attribute that is being perceived as demeaning these characters into Otherness.
¡®We all see the world in our own way,¡¯ Kojima writes, and sometimes these perspectives on life are uncomfortable and conflicting. On one hand, we have Kojima and her belief in meaning and that there is a moral reward for doing the right thing, like theres a purpose that ¡®understands the meaning of everything we¡¯ve been through when it¡¯s all over.¡¯ For her, someone who allows herself to suffer and continues to present herself in a way that draws scorn, is a right of passage and moral message to the world where everyone else is complicit¡ªespecially by inaction to countering the worst abusers and thereby enabling much like ¡¯s theory of ¡ªand therefor she is there to teach them.
This belief, which also views people as victims to normalcy and an oppressive social system they are being used within, is countered by one of the bullies. ¡®There¡¯s no beautiful world where everyone things the same way and they all understand each other,¡¯ Momose, the near emotionless and potentially sociopathic (or, for literary purposes, the watcher figure of the novel) bully character asserts.
His ideology is in direct contrast with Kojima¡¯s belief that their suffering and martyrdom has meaning, claiming ¡®none of this has any meaning. Everyone just does what they want...nothing is good or bad.¡¯ and people just do whatever is possible. Harming others isn¡¯t about their eyes or poorness, he claims, but simply because they are beneath them and able to be hurt.
'Listen, if there's a hell, we're in it. And if there's a heaven, we're already there...I think that's fucking great.'
Something Kawakami does exceptionally well is create countering arguments without particularly siding with either, letting the novels play out within their frameworks and allowing the reader to make do of them as they will. It¡¯s one of the aspects I enjoy most about her. These differing ideologies function as a nebulous duality to perspectives on life that we see come to play in structures of power and politics all the time. They also present ideas on the meaning of life. Kojima sees suffering as something that will be rewarded later in a very religious sort of sense. Her vision of heaven is personified in a painting she takes the narrator to see, one that shows two people in a basic room together.
This idea of heaven in the mundane encaptulates her existence and the painting is highly symbolic and something we have to take from her on faith, being only symbolic in a sense like in Woolf's as we never actually see the painting. Momose, however, does not see meaning or purpose in anything, so everything is thereby permissable and consquences are only for those who let someone get the better of them. They can enforce rules onto others, but don't truly believe rules apply.
The narrator in the novel is a passive vessel to hear these opposing notions on life and try to process them within himself, unsure if it can ever be an either/or situation. Is his eye the cause of who he is, or does his eye not even matter and he is bullied simply for being a weaker figure as Momose insists. While he grapples, there is also the mother figure of the novel who simply balks at everything. Honestly, she is my favorite and such a relatable character always looking at the world and saying ¡®that was weird, right?¡¯ This is a whole mood and one I know well. She also figures into Kawakami¡¯s theme of the complexities of familial relations and non-traditional family structures that always resonates like a punk rebellion against what she shows as an image-based society.
'Everything was beautiful. Not that there was anyone to share it with, anyone to tell. Just the beauty.'
Heaven is a brief yet hard-hitting novel that examines meaning and power in a really enthralling manner. The finale is shocking and really drives home her message of resistance and rebellion in a way that feels like a rebuke of ¡¯s compliant, young female characters with the surreal and devastating climax. Her prose is simple yet serene, with complex imagery that is sure to enrapture the reader and colors each scene in pitch perfect emotional context. This is a powerful and heart wrenching little book with an emotional resonance far exceeding it¡¯s page count and I am eager to read everything and anything this incredible author has to offer.
4.5/5
¡®We do it for everyone who¡¯s weak everywhere, in the name of actual strength. Everything we take, all of the abuse, we do it to rise above. We do it for the people who know how important it is.¡¯
In the past year I¡¯ve really come to appreciate Mieko Kawakami. Heralded by , I eagerly dove in and have not been continuously astonished by her ouveur and literary punk-rock expressions of ideas. Heaven is the third novel translated to English by Japanese singer turned poet turned author Mieko Kawakami, who;s much praised¡ªand deservedly so¡ªBreasts and Eggs topped almost every Best Of list for 2020 (Heaven was shortlisted for the ), and is an extraordinary little novel that really highlights her major themes. Told from the perspective of a young boy who has faced heartbreaking and tragic levels of bullying, Kawakami delves into issues of trauma and how various ideologies on meaning in life address trauma. Deftly positioning the issues as a larger critique on society, ableism, and classism, Kawakami crafts a marvelously engaging book that is both heartbreaking and illuminating.
¡®If we¡¯re weak, our weakness has real meaning.¡¯
Published in Japan in 2009 and just now translated into English by Sam Bett and David Boyd, Heaven predates both Ms Ice Sandwich and the completed two-part Breasts and Eggs (though not the original novella) and reads like a thematic Big Bang of her primary ideas. The story follows a brutally bullied young boy and his growing friendship with classmate, Kojima, who is also a primary target for abuse in the classroom. While the narrator comes across as weak and complaint to his violent detriment, Kojima is passive to abuse in a different way. With a voice that ¡®reminds me of a 6B (pencil),¡¯ he says to her in a letter, ¡®soft and rigid at the same time., Kojima is a bit of an icon of ascetic resistance icon who believes their suffering has a deeper meaning of real strength and that they are an avenue to teach their bullies a lesson.
Through the emotional journey that explores the perils of a relationship forged on shared suffering, Kawami demonstrates one of her most impressive literary attributes: creating heartrending juvenile characters that read as so lifelike and empathetic you want to give them a hug. Such as Midoriko in B&E or the narrator in Ms Ice Sandwich, Kawakami truly shines when examining youthful emotions in a way that would make her novels a perfect crossover for YA readers.
¡®My eye was behind all my problems.¡¯
Kojimo has an interesting philosophy on bullying and the reasons behind it. ¡®It¡¯s a painful thing, I know¡¯ she says to the narrator over his eye, which is a frequent impetus for teasing, ¡®but it¡¯s also made you who you are.¡¯ Their signs, as she calls them, that makes them targets, are also what defines them, according to her, due to how it regulates them in the social hierarchy. There is a conversation where the narrator wishes he could be like a regular object the bullies ignore, but Kojima cuts him off to say ¡®that¡¯s what we are to them.¡¯ They are objects of torture objectified by their aberations, he for his eye and she for appearing dirty and poor (¡®you can look as good as anyone else,¡¯ Kojima points out, ¡®it doesn¡¯t even matter if you¡¯re poor,¡¯ which is one of the many doorways into class conflict discourse this novel examines).
The way a person can become an Other in society is analyzed in the broader scheme of her works, but also how this happens by being objectified. Physical traits aren¡¯t a valid indication of a person, but it becomes such a large part of the way people choose to see us and value us. Breasts and Eggs scrutinizes how use value in labor is contingent on physical attributes, such as Makiko undergoing breast enhancement surgery despite a large price barrier for the purpose of making her more profitable as a bar employee. Similar to the eye issue in Heaven is the titular character of Ms Ice Sandwich, who underwent facial surgery in hopes of better job placement due to physical beauty (patriarchal gaze abound) but a botched surgery left her with giant eyes that make her an outcast and target for scorn. The use of eyes for this social investigation is brilliant, as eyes are the way we perceive the world around us and are ironically the attribute that is being perceived as demeaning these characters into Otherness.
¡®We all see the world in our own way,¡¯ Kojima writes, and sometimes these perspectives on life are uncomfortable and conflicting. On one hand, we have Kojima and her belief in meaning and that there is a moral reward for doing the right thing, like theres a purpose that ¡®understands the meaning of everything we¡¯ve been through when it¡¯s all over.¡¯ For her, someone who allows herself to suffer and continues to present herself in a way that draws scorn, is a right of passage and moral message to the world where everyone else is complicit¡ªespecially by inaction to countering the worst abusers and thereby enabling much like ¡¯s theory of ¡ªand therefor she is there to teach them.
¡¯They aren¡¯t even thinking. Not at all. They¡¯re just doing what they¡¯ve seen other people do, following blindly. They don¡¯t know what it means, or why they¡¯re doing it¡.they¡¯re never stopped to think about other people¡¯s pain. They¡¯re just following along, doing what everyone else does.¡¯
This belief, which also views people as victims to normalcy and an oppressive social system they are being used within, is countered by one of the bullies. ¡®There¡¯s no beautiful world where everyone things the same way and they all understand each other,¡¯ Momose, the near emotionless and potentially sociopathic (or, for literary purposes, the watcher figure of the novel) bully character asserts.
¡¯Does anything in the world happen for a reason? Pretty sure the answer¡¯s no. Yeah, once it¡¯s happened, you can come up with all kinds of explanations that look like they make perfect sense. But everything starts from nothing. Always.¡¯
His ideology is in direct contrast with Kojima¡¯s belief that their suffering and martyrdom has meaning, claiming ¡®none of this has any meaning. Everyone just does what they want...nothing is good or bad.¡¯ and people just do whatever is possible. Harming others isn¡¯t about their eyes or poorness, he claims, but simply because they are beneath them and able to be hurt.
'Listen, if there's a hell, we're in it. And if there's a heaven, we're already there...I think that's fucking great.'
Something Kawakami does exceptionally well is create countering arguments without particularly siding with either, letting the novels play out within their frameworks and allowing the reader to make do of them as they will. It¡¯s one of the aspects I enjoy most about her. These differing ideologies function as a nebulous duality to perspectives on life that we see come to play in structures of power and politics all the time. They also present ideas on the meaning of life. Kojima sees suffering as something that will be rewarded later in a very religious sort of sense. Her vision of heaven is personified in a painting she takes the narrator to see, one that shows two people in a basic room together.
'After everything, after all the pain, they made it here. It looks like a normal room, but it's really heaven.'
This idea of heaven in the mundane encaptulates her existence and the painting is highly symbolic and something we have to take from her on faith, being only symbolic in a sense like in Woolf's as we never actually see the painting. Momose, however, does not see meaning or purpose in anything, so everything is thereby permissable and consquences are only for those who let someone get the better of them. They can enforce rules onto others, but don't truly believe rules apply.
The narrator in the novel is a passive vessel to hear these opposing notions on life and try to process them within himself, unsure if it can ever be an either/or situation. Is his eye the cause of who he is, or does his eye not even matter and he is bullied simply for being a weaker figure as Momose insists. While he grapples, there is also the mother figure of the novel who simply balks at everything. Honestly, she is my favorite and such a relatable character always looking at the world and saying ¡®that was weird, right?¡¯ This is a whole mood and one I know well. She also figures into Kawakami¡¯s theme of the complexities of familial relations and non-traditional family structures that always resonates like a punk rebellion against what she shows as an image-based society.
'Everything was beautiful. Not that there was anyone to share it with, anyone to tell. Just the beauty.'
Heaven is a brief yet hard-hitting novel that examines meaning and power in a really enthralling manner. The finale is shocking and really drives home her message of resistance and rebellion in a way that feels like a rebuke of ¡¯s compliant, young female characters with the surreal and devastating climax. Her prose is simple yet serene, with complex imagery that is sure to enrapture the reader and colors each scene in pitch perfect emotional context. This is a powerful and heart wrenching little book with an emotional resonance far exceeding it¡¯s page count and I am eager to read everything and anything this incredible author has to offer.
4.5/5
¡®We do it for everyone who¡¯s weak everywhere, in the name of actual strength. Everything we take, all of the abuse, we do it to rise above. We do it for the people who know how important it is.¡¯
March 17, 2022
HEAVEN wrung me out, and then it lifted me up.
There is level of uncomfortable realism to some scenes in the novel. There are some very brutal scenes of children hurting one another. But these scenes aren't the purpose of the novel--they act instead as a springboard for Kawakami to embark on a serious moral inquiry into the nature of human relationships, the meaning of friendship, the obligations of familial love, and the definition of power.
Throughout the novel Kawakami gives children voice and agency to reflect on their experiences and to explore their beliefs. At times these children speak like they're in the middle of a Platonic dialog rather than coming across as two children having a childlike conversation. As a storytelling device it's a brave choice, as it can seem at odds with the scenes of violence that are written so realistically. It works brilliantly. The children's observations give meaning to the violent acts that they're either perpetrating, or are the victim of. They give the reader a chance to recover, too, and they allow the reader to explore more fully why humans behave as they do.
Maybe what I admire most in this story is the way Kawakami individuates her characters. These characters are mysterious and complicated and unique, and this novel is a wonder.
First read in ARC, made available from NetGalley and Europa Editions, and twice thereafter, just to learn how it works.
There is level of uncomfortable realism to some scenes in the novel. There are some very brutal scenes of children hurting one another. But these scenes aren't the purpose of the novel--they act instead as a springboard for Kawakami to embark on a serious moral inquiry into the nature of human relationships, the meaning of friendship, the obligations of familial love, and the definition of power.
Throughout the novel Kawakami gives children voice and agency to reflect on their experiences and to explore their beliefs. At times these children speak like they're in the middle of a Platonic dialog rather than coming across as two children having a childlike conversation. As a storytelling device it's a brave choice, as it can seem at odds with the scenes of violence that are written so realistically. It works brilliantly. The children's observations give meaning to the violent acts that they're either perpetrating, or are the victim of. They give the reader a chance to recover, too, and they allow the reader to explore more fully why humans behave as they do.
Maybe what I admire most in this story is the way Kawakami individuates her characters. These characters are mysterious and complicated and unique, and this novel is a wonder.
First read in ARC, made available from NetGalley and Europa Editions, and twice thereafter, just to learn how it works.
May 17, 2022
Shortlisted for Booker International 2022
Audiobook narrated by Scott Keiji Takeda and translated from Japanese into English by Sam Bett and David Boyd.
Ebook translated from Japanese in Romanian by Iolanda Prodan
Heaven was so hard to read and to rate. The subject is heartbreaking, namely bullying in school. The writing is not difficult but I had to skip some passages where the bulling was described in detail. I guess I am quite sensitive when it comes to violence towards children, being it incurred by adults or young aggressors. For this reason I preferred the written ebook in Romanian to the narration in English. I tried both options but it was easier to skim read what made me too emotional. Since the novel was nominated for a translation to English, I probably have cheated reading half of it in Romanian but it was a good opportunity to compare translations. Both were pretty good, although I cannot compare them with the original.
14 year old boy and a girl, Kojima, are two pupils studying at the same Japanese school in.They are both restlessly aggressed by their colleagues, one for having a lazy eye and the other for being dirty and unkept. One day, the boy starts to receive hidden messages from Kojima and it becomes the beginning of a strange and heartwarming friendship.
The dialogue between the two characters made the novel special for me although, at times, it was hard to believe that two children could include so much philosophy in their discussions. The conversation between the boy and one of his bullies regarding the reasons behind their actions (and inaction) was the highlight of this novel.
Audiobook narrated by Scott Keiji Takeda and translated from Japanese into English by Sam Bett and David Boyd.
Ebook translated from Japanese in Romanian by Iolanda Prodan
Heaven was so hard to read and to rate. The subject is heartbreaking, namely bullying in school. The writing is not difficult but I had to skip some passages where the bulling was described in detail. I guess I am quite sensitive when it comes to violence towards children, being it incurred by adults or young aggressors. For this reason I preferred the written ebook in Romanian to the narration in English. I tried both options but it was easier to skim read what made me too emotional. Since the novel was nominated for a translation to English, I probably have cheated reading half of it in Romanian but it was a good opportunity to compare translations. Both were pretty good, although I cannot compare them with the original.
14 year old boy and a girl, Kojima, are two pupils studying at the same Japanese school in.They are both restlessly aggressed by their colleagues, one for having a lazy eye and the other for being dirty and unkept. One day, the boy starts to receive hidden messages from Kojima and it becomes the beginning of a strange and heartwarming friendship.
The dialogue between the two characters made the novel special for me although, at times, it was hard to believe that two children could include so much philosophy in their discussions. The conversation between the boy and one of his bullies regarding the reasons behind their actions (and inaction) was the highlight of this novel.
October 4, 2021
This impactful, genius and unique Heaven hurts.
Heaven is a Japanese translated novel by a genius author Meiko Kawakami, read any of her book and you will get you know why I called her a genius.
The book is about bullying and behaviour of bullies and one who get bullied. It's a raw and grounded exploration behind impact of bullying as well as human relationships. Meiko created something frighteningly honest and powerful with her flair of words and dialogue writing.
I really adored the relationship between our protagonist and Komoji ( his classmate who also get bullied), together they both gave each other strength and support. The writing was very lyrical and it just flew smoothly perfectly knitted with top notch dialogues which weren't too teenagey but at the same time correctly explains the feeling of teen heart and mind.
This was heartbreaking , distressing and difficult because of all those bullying scenes that's why I said this is more real and grounded.
And that talk between our protagonist and his bully about the philosophy behind bullying. It's hits so hard and so bad.
Highly recommended for lovers of good literature.?
------------
pre review
This was sad and brilliant / 4 stars review to come.
-----------
tbr review :-
Me randomly adding books to my never ending tbr because it's ASIAN
Heaven is a Japanese translated novel by a genius author Meiko Kawakami, read any of her book and you will get you know why I called her a genius.
The book is about bullying and behaviour of bullies and one who get bullied. It's a raw and grounded exploration behind impact of bullying as well as human relationships. Meiko created something frighteningly honest and powerful with her flair of words and dialogue writing.
I really adored the relationship between our protagonist and Komoji ( his classmate who also get bullied), together they both gave each other strength and support. The writing was very lyrical and it just flew smoothly perfectly knitted with top notch dialogues which weren't too teenagey but at the same time correctly explains the feeling of teen heart and mind.
This was heartbreaking , distressing and difficult because of all those bullying scenes that's why I said this is more real and grounded.
And that talk between our protagonist and his bully about the philosophy behind bullying. It's hits so hard and so bad.
Highly recommended for lovers of good literature.?
------------
pre review
This was sad and brilliant / 4 stars review to come.
-----------
tbr review :-
Me randomly adding books to my never ending tbr because it's ASIAN
June 17, 2022
Life is about compromise.
I don't think it should be - for example, you can make brown-butter chocolate chip cookies with sea salt on top anytime you want, and there is absolutely no compromise on deliciousness there - but apparently, it is.
And for me, this book is about compromise, seeing as it'ss half a kind of book I hate (detailed and long-winded renditions of the suffering of innocent people, in this case children) and half a kind of book I love (philosophical musings).
What it results in, instead of an unholy level of yum that you can replace your dinner with if you're determined, is an extremely absurd collection of conversations between kids where they are mouthpieces for mature and complete worldviews on good vs evil, innocence, morality, nihilism, and the meaning of life.
I didn't hate it but that's the nicest thing I can say. Oh wait - the ending was lovely. That's the nicest thing.
Bottom line: Odd! But most things are.
------------
pre-review
i hate books with plots like this one, but i love mieko kawakami...let's find out which will win!
update: neither!
review to come / 2.5 or 3 stars
------------
reading books by asian authors for aapi month!
book 1: kim jiyoung, born 1982
book 2: siren queen
book 3: the heart principle
book 4: n.p.
book 5: the hole
book 6: set on you
book 7: disorientation
book 8: parade
book 9: if i had your face
book 10: joan is okay
book 11: strange weather in tokyo
book 12: sarong party girls
book 13: the wind-up bird chronicle
book 14: portrait of a thief
book 15: sophie go's lonely hearts club
book 16: chemistry
book 17: heaven
------------------------
tbr review
love to love a book by an author, wait a year, randomly add another to my tbr, and continue to not read it
I don't think it should be - for example, you can make brown-butter chocolate chip cookies with sea salt on top anytime you want, and there is absolutely no compromise on deliciousness there - but apparently, it is.
And for me, this book is about compromise, seeing as it'ss half a kind of book I hate (detailed and long-winded renditions of the suffering of innocent people, in this case children) and half a kind of book I love (philosophical musings).
What it results in, instead of an unholy level of yum that you can replace your dinner with if you're determined, is an extremely absurd collection of conversations between kids where they are mouthpieces for mature and complete worldviews on good vs evil, innocence, morality, nihilism, and the meaning of life.
I didn't hate it but that's the nicest thing I can say. Oh wait - the ending was lovely. That's the nicest thing.
Bottom line: Odd! But most things are.
------------
pre-review
i hate books with plots like this one, but i love mieko kawakami...let's find out which will win!
update: neither!
review to come / 2.5 or 3 stars
------------
reading books by asian authors for aapi month!
book 1: kim jiyoung, born 1982
book 2: siren queen
book 3: the heart principle
book 4: n.p.
book 5: the hole
book 6: set on you
book 7: disorientation
book 8: parade
book 9: if i had your face
book 10: joan is okay
book 11: strange weather in tokyo
book 12: sarong party girls
book 13: the wind-up bird chronicle
book 14: portrait of a thief
book 15: sophie go's lonely hearts club
book 16: chemistry
book 17: heaven
------------------------
tbr review
love to love a book by an author, wait a year, randomly add another to my tbr, and continue to not read it
September 15, 2022
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022
Bullying and the tragedy of children trying to find meaning in a world focussed on conformity and the strong, instead of the weak
We are a lot like things already. She bit her lower lip and laughed. You and know both know it isn¡¯t true but that¡¯s what we are for them.
I felt a lot of emotion while reading the book, is certainly a book with impact, through telling in simple prose the everyday horrors of school life. Beside indignant I also felt weary in the latter half of the book, since the abuse needs to be placed in a juxtaposition with the actions of the main character, and he is profoundly inactive. The philosophical overtones are definitely interesting, and made me feel some of the class mates weren't just bordering on psychopath, but also avid readers of Nietzsche (and me giving only 1 star made these dialogues profoundly annoying to read). For more background on the philosophical themes of the book also refer to this New Yorker article:
Bullying, loneliness, expertly executes these in this book.
For me academic performance was a beacon during school, but that is not a route open to the two outcasts at the heart of Heaven. Kojima and the narrator find each other in being different, but this offers little protection against the outside world. Adults are very much absent and the kids are amorphous mass of conformity enforcers headed by two psychopaths. They even turn someone into a human football (failingly enough through a volleyball).
Art is a kind of an escape, the outcasts take a trip to a museum and visit if I interpret it right, some Chagall's. I don¡¯t think people are in general so uniformly callous, even though I was bullied in class as well. His classmate is like a full blown psychopath, even if his message that people need to do something about their own circumstances is valid enough in the context of the book.
His classmate's strong and the weak monologue (Listen, if there is a hell, we're in it. And if there's a heaven, we're already there. This is it) and living for one¡¯s cravings even more than the physical abuse, unsettles everything in the life of the main character even more.
Everything comes to a head even more when an option is presented to the narrator of normality. I thought we were friends is the strategy Kojima uses; this kind of manipulative strategy, with people who want a relationship as long as you do what they want, leads to a cathartic scene.
The resolution is intense, but felt also a tad too easy, since one could think that the option was available before already.
The prose of Kawakami is effective, and I wrote down quite some quotes. Still I was less impressed in general than I expected upfront. 3 solids stars and more of the author catalogue to discover in the future!
Quotes:
I told her that in my view hurting and crying were different things.
I can¡¯t express how safe it felt to never be seen
I can lose my sight but I can¡¯t lose my mom - the tragic of kids trying to get their parents get along
What matters is that all the pain all the sadness have meaning
There are all kinds of things I don¡¯t understand in the world but I wanted to understand you
Does anything in the world happen for a reason? I guess the reason is no.
There is no beautiful world where everyone thinks the same way and understand each other perfectly, it doesn¡¯t exist. You think it does, but it is not real.
Bullying and the tragedy of children trying to find meaning in a world focussed on conformity and the strong, instead of the weak
We are a lot like things already. She bit her lower lip and laughed. You and know both know it isn¡¯t true but that¡¯s what we are for them.
I felt a lot of emotion while reading the book, is certainly a book with impact, through telling in simple prose the everyday horrors of school life. Beside indignant I also felt weary in the latter half of the book, since the abuse needs to be placed in a juxtaposition with the actions of the main character, and he is profoundly inactive. The philosophical overtones are definitely interesting, and made me feel some of the class mates weren't just bordering on psychopath, but also avid readers of Nietzsche (and me giving only 1 star made these dialogues profoundly annoying to read). For more background on the philosophical themes of the book also refer to this New Yorker article:
Bullying, loneliness, expertly executes these in this book.
For me academic performance was a beacon during school, but that is not a route open to the two outcasts at the heart of Heaven. Kojima and the narrator find each other in being different, but this offers little protection against the outside world. Adults are very much absent and the kids are amorphous mass of conformity enforcers headed by two psychopaths. They even turn someone into a human football (failingly enough through a volleyball).
Art is a kind of an escape, the outcasts take a trip to a museum and visit if I interpret it right, some Chagall's. I don¡¯t think people are in general so uniformly callous, even though I was bullied in class as well. His classmate is like a full blown psychopath, even if his message that people need to do something about their own circumstances is valid enough in the context of the book.
His classmate's strong and the weak monologue (Listen, if there is a hell, we're in it. And if there's a heaven, we're already there. This is it) and living for one¡¯s cravings even more than the physical abuse, unsettles everything in the life of the main character even more.
Everything comes to a head even more when an option is presented to the narrator of normality. I thought we were friends is the strategy Kojima uses; this kind of manipulative strategy, with people who want a relationship as long as you do what they want, leads to a cathartic scene.
The resolution is intense, but felt also a tad too easy, since one could think that the option was available before already.
The prose of Kawakami is effective, and I wrote down quite some quotes. Still I was less impressed in general than I expected upfront. 3 solids stars and more of the author catalogue to discover in the future!
Quotes:
I told her that in my view hurting and crying were different things.
I can¡¯t express how safe it felt to never be seen
I can lose my sight but I can¡¯t lose my mom - the tragic of kids trying to get their parents get along
What matters is that all the pain all the sadness have meaning
There are all kinds of things I don¡¯t understand in the world but I wanted to understand you
Does anything in the world happen for a reason? I guess the reason is no.
There is no beautiful world where everyone thinks the same way and understand each other perfectly, it doesn¡¯t exist. You think it does, but it is not real.
June 9, 2021
Nothing twists my heart like recalling the alienation I felt in childhood. That was a time of blistering self-awareness made all the more painful by children around me who gleefully pointed out my apparent ¡°flaws¡± and punished me for them. In retrospect we like to say it's our differences which make us unique. We like to assert how the antagonism we endured has made us stronger. These are empowering notions, but what truth does this rationality hold when we still experience the visceral sting of emotional wounds from bullying?
Mieko Kawakami's novel ¡°Heaven¡± meditates on the real meaning of these trials of childhood. It contemplates who really holds the power in a dynamic where the few who are weak are preyed upon by the dominant majority. It questions what lessons are learned and what truth is revealed by these conflicts. We follow the perspective of a fourteen-year-old boy cruelly nicknamed Eyes by the boys at his school because he has a lazy eye. They relentlessly bully him for this. As their savagery escalates he befriends his classmate Kojima, a female classmate who refuses to practice standard hygiene for a special reason and gets cruelly persecuted by the other schoolgirls.
Read my full
Mieko Kawakami's novel ¡°Heaven¡± meditates on the real meaning of these trials of childhood. It contemplates who really holds the power in a dynamic where the few who are weak are preyed upon by the dominant majority. It questions what lessons are learned and what truth is revealed by these conflicts. We follow the perspective of a fourteen-year-old boy cruelly nicknamed Eyes by the boys at his school because he has a lazy eye. They relentlessly bully him for this. As their savagery escalates he befriends his classmate Kojima, a female classmate who refuses to practice standard hygiene for a special reason and gets cruelly persecuted by the other schoolgirls.
Read my full
March 7, 2023
i fucking hate bullies
January 8, 2021
I am cautiously optimistic regarding Mieko Kawakami's literary future. She is a rising star of popular Japanese fiction, but I see her writing style suffering from common traits plaguing the English translations we are getting within the past several years. It is a kind of commercial dumbing down of the prose. Contemporary Japanese books are sliding into the mainstream perhaps, and losing some of that Mishima-level literary refinement. You don't get anything on the level of Ryu Murakami anymore, and a lot of these super-young, female literary writers are appealing to the same crowd as Haruki Murakami whose pop celebrity status spawned a new generation of imitators.
If the style of this novel resembled her short stories from the publication Monkey Business, it would have easily merited more enthusiasm from me. Yet, it would be easy to slide this into the YA category. Like her recent Breasts and Eggs, she wrestles with important and emotionally trying topics, boasting a wealth of subtext, but employs a utilitarian style I can only describe as bland.
I realize this book takes place from the perspective of a 14 year old, but I would've liked to read something more developed than straightforward, childish thoughts and internal argument. The conversations are surface level, and the atmosphere is poorly established. The syntax is so literal, unadorned, sloppy, straightforward and fast-paced it felt like reading a newspaper. I would have to put this in the same category as Snakes and Earrings, which is pulp, adolescent fiction, not challenging in any way. This is simply my opinion, and I will read anything Kawakami puts out into English. She is certainly capable of establishing a similar output to Banana Yoshimoto or even Dazai, but not if she chooses to continue taking the easy route to popularity. I would like to see her recapture the bent toward magical realism you'll find in her short stories, and strive toward producing complex portrayals of modern life.
To bolster my argument, I'll have to look at the book's interior logistics. You get a few main characters. The bullied kid with a mild deformity, a visibly poor friend, and the self-justified douche of the school bully. Nothing revolutionary in this set up. The kids confront one another. There are graphic scenes of creepily sadistic bullying and one or two scenes utterly inappropriate for children. I wouldn't care, except who exactly, is the audience for this novel? If it is really YA why does she include the graphic sexuality - especially when it is not relevant to the story, and if it is for adults, why is it so simplistic and forced, so underwritten?
I wish I could say it was more than a disposable read, but I have seen all of these themes explored elsewhere with more lyricism and depth. You get plenty of examples and moral arguments here, but their context is so very contrived. A confounding mixture of heartstring manipulation and weak writing.
If the style of this novel resembled her short stories from the publication Monkey Business, it would have easily merited more enthusiasm from me. Yet, it would be easy to slide this into the YA category. Like her recent Breasts and Eggs, she wrestles with important and emotionally trying topics, boasting a wealth of subtext, but employs a utilitarian style I can only describe as bland.
I realize this book takes place from the perspective of a 14 year old, but I would've liked to read something more developed than straightforward, childish thoughts and internal argument. The conversations are surface level, and the atmosphere is poorly established. The syntax is so literal, unadorned, sloppy, straightforward and fast-paced it felt like reading a newspaper. I would have to put this in the same category as Snakes and Earrings, which is pulp, adolescent fiction, not challenging in any way. This is simply my opinion, and I will read anything Kawakami puts out into English. She is certainly capable of establishing a similar output to Banana Yoshimoto or even Dazai, but not if she chooses to continue taking the easy route to popularity. I would like to see her recapture the bent toward magical realism you'll find in her short stories, and strive toward producing complex portrayals of modern life.
To bolster my argument, I'll have to look at the book's interior logistics. You get a few main characters. The bullied kid with a mild deformity, a visibly poor friend, and the self-justified douche of the school bully. Nothing revolutionary in this set up. The kids confront one another. There are graphic scenes of creepily sadistic bullying and one or two scenes utterly inappropriate for children. I wouldn't care, except who exactly, is the audience for this novel? If it is really YA why does she include the graphic sexuality - especially when it is not relevant to the story, and if it is for adults, why is it so simplistic and forced, so underwritten?
I wish I could say it was more than a disposable read, but I have seen all of these themes explored elsewhere with more lyricism and depth. You get plenty of examples and moral arguments here, but their context is so very contrived. A confounding mixture of heartstring manipulation and weak writing.
![Profile Image for ?hrissie ? [1st week on campus-somewhat run-down].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1610034740i%2F49071166._UX200_CR0%2C20%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
April 12, 2022
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022
Mieko Kawakami's Heaven is a plain-seeming, heartrending novel about bullying that deftly tests assumptions about morality and meaning...and invites a close encounter with Nietzschean philosophy.
The narrative follows 14-year-old narrator's resigned yet inly tormented struggle against bullying, as well as his frustrated endeavours to make sense of his trampled-upon existence. He is convinced that his lazy eye makes him an easy target, as do Kojima's self-created 'signs' (her wilfully 'dirty' appearance, linking her to her miserably poor father, and her later refusal to eat, resulting in excessive weight loss). Both the narrator and Kojima are presented as outsiders, othered and unaccepted by the world ¨C epitomes, in Kojima's view, of 'the strength of weakness'. The narrator in particular feels that he has no choice in the matter; that the world ruthlessly and unfailingly predetermines his inescapable fate.
These are some of the questions our main characters grapple with. The bullies ¨C Ninomiya, Momose and clan ¨C represent the extreme pole of domination, post-moral conduct with the prevailing of the pleasure principle, arbitrariness and meaninglessness. The bullied ¨C the narrator and Kojima ¨C represent, on the other hand, the other extreme pole of subjugation, with a belief in moral standards, structures, and the possibility of meaning. This scissors-like contradiction ¨C and the broad spectrum of its possible manifestations, with murkily merging, at times dangerously overlapping outcomes ¨C constitute the firm framework of the narrative.
The simplicity of the storyline allows for a more invested approach to philosophical enquiry and nuancing. In this respect, it is of some importance to note that the narrative portrays the bullied's sharp sense of vulnerability and humiliation ¨C and does so with urgent intimacy ¨C before articulating a more complex understanding of its thematic concerns. On their Summer trip to the museum, Kojima tells the narrator about a painting featuring a couple in ordinary circumstances, enjoying the rewards reaped from having overcome pain and sadness together. She renames the painting 'Heaven', because clearly this represents her fairly na?ve idea of heaven. It is however symptomatic that Kojima and the narrator never actually get to view the painting together. And, also, that the ending is deliberately ambiguous on this front, that is, as regards to the empowering force of overcoming suffering. It is certainly not cathartic in a complete sense, or distortedly so. Because the narrator is only able to draw 'incompatible conclusions' and is 'unable to tell which one was true'.
The extended, exceedingly harrowing, and bloody bullying episode ¨C in which the narrator gets heavily injured and must go to the hospital ¨C builds up to the confrontation, between the narrator and Momose, on which the entire thrust of the novel's philosophical questioning seems to rest. I would argue, however, that the confrontation scene presents some important issues. Essentially, it is baffling that Momose should be expected to take upon himself the weighty task of recalibrating the morality question, with claims and statements that can hardly be those of a 14-year-old. The level of unconvincing discourse at such a momentous and critical point of the narration is not what I would have expected. Insofar as it is a pivotal movement in the novel, I cannot help but feel that the somewhat awkward, inadequately handled, and overall unsatisfactory execution of this scene is far from being a trivial matter, and sadly undermines the narrative cohesion. It is as if Kawakami gets carried away by the desire to trace a philosophically complex tabula of the morality question, removing her characters from their determining contexts. In essence, Momose calls forth the idea that 'It couldn't be any simpler. People do what they can get away with.' Acting, therefore, on the spur of the moment; purely doing things on a whim. Irrespective of the person on the receiving end. Because what matters, from where the bullies are standing, is following one's urges, whatever they may be.
I found the writing delicately poetic, lyrical almost, in its depiction of the narrator's interaction with his hostile whereabouts and his plight; also with nature itself as it is perceived by him, through his lazy eye: depthless and, on its part, beautifully overpowering. There is also a touching sense of intimacy in the unfolding of his friendship with Kojima, largely developed through letter-writing and punctuated by moments of silence. The development of their friendship is not strained at all, and does justice to the morose sentiment of Kawakami's vision.
This is ultimately an important novel. It strikes me as a singular occurrence within the literary scene, in that it sets itself the task of presenting a sufficiently complex portrayal of a reality ¨C bullying ¨C that does not generally find its way into literary fiction, notwithstanding the range of its marked presence and manifestation in everyday existence.
4 stars. The novel's philosophical import is worth noting. To my mind, however, the partial mismanagement of the narrative's core movement constitutes too relevant an issue, and detracted, to some degree, from its literary value.
Mieko Kawakami's Heaven is a plain-seeming, heartrending novel about bullying that deftly tests assumptions about morality and meaning...and invites a close encounter with Nietzschean philosophy.
The narrative follows 14-year-old narrator's resigned yet inly tormented struggle against bullying, as well as his frustrated endeavours to make sense of his trampled-upon existence. He is convinced that his lazy eye makes him an easy target, as do Kojima's self-created 'signs' (her wilfully 'dirty' appearance, linking her to her miserably poor father, and her later refusal to eat, resulting in excessive weight loss). Both the narrator and Kojima are presented as outsiders, othered and unaccepted by the world ¨C epitomes, in Kojima's view, of 'the strength of weakness'. The narrator in particular feels that he has no choice in the matter; that the world ruthlessly and unfailingly predetermines his inescapable fate.
But is it really so? Is there meaning in pain and suffering? How does the dialectical relationship between strength / weakness and its predominance invalidate the standard conception of good versus bad? What are we left with, when there is seemingly nothing left to save?
These are some of the questions our main characters grapple with. The bullies ¨C Ninomiya, Momose and clan ¨C represent the extreme pole of domination, post-moral conduct with the prevailing of the pleasure principle, arbitrariness and meaninglessness. The bullied ¨C the narrator and Kojima ¨C represent, on the other hand, the other extreme pole of subjugation, with a belief in moral standards, structures, and the possibility of meaning. This scissors-like contradiction ¨C and the broad spectrum of its possible manifestations, with murkily merging, at times dangerously overlapping outcomes ¨C constitute the firm framework of the narrative.
The simplicity of the storyline allows for a more invested approach to philosophical enquiry and nuancing. In this respect, it is of some importance to note that the narrative portrays the bullied's sharp sense of vulnerability and humiliation ¨C and does so with urgent intimacy ¨C before articulating a more complex understanding of its thematic concerns. On their Summer trip to the museum, Kojima tells the narrator about a painting featuring a couple in ordinary circumstances, enjoying the rewards reaped from having overcome pain and sadness together. She renames the painting 'Heaven', because clearly this represents her fairly na?ve idea of heaven. It is however symptomatic that Kojima and the narrator never actually get to view the painting together. And, also, that the ending is deliberately ambiguous on this front, that is, as regards to the empowering force of overcoming suffering. It is certainly not cathartic in a complete sense, or distortedly so. Because the narrator is only able to draw 'incompatible conclusions' and is 'unable to tell which one was true'.
The extended, exceedingly harrowing, and bloody bullying episode ¨C in which the narrator gets heavily injured and must go to the hospital ¨C builds up to the confrontation, between the narrator and Momose, on which the entire thrust of the novel's philosophical questioning seems to rest. I would argue, however, that the confrontation scene presents some important issues. Essentially, it is baffling that Momose should be expected to take upon himself the weighty task of recalibrating the morality question, with claims and statements that can hardly be those of a 14-year-old. The level of unconvincing discourse at such a momentous and critical point of the narration is not what I would have expected. Insofar as it is a pivotal movement in the novel, I cannot help but feel that the somewhat awkward, inadequately handled, and overall unsatisfactory execution of this scene is far from being a trivial matter, and sadly undermines the narrative cohesion. It is as if Kawakami gets carried away by the desire to trace a philosophically complex tabula of the morality question, removing her characters from their determining contexts. In essence, Momose calls forth the idea that 'It couldn't be any simpler. People do what they can get away with.' Acting, therefore, on the spur of the moment; purely doing things on a whim. Irrespective of the person on the receiving end. Because what matters, from where the bullies are standing, is following one's urges, whatever they may be.
I found the writing delicately poetic, lyrical almost, in its depiction of the narrator's interaction with his hostile whereabouts and his plight; also with nature itself as it is perceived by him, through his lazy eye: depthless and, on its part, beautifully overpowering. There is also a touching sense of intimacy in the unfolding of his friendship with Kojima, largely developed through letter-writing and punctuated by moments of silence. The development of their friendship is not strained at all, and does justice to the morose sentiment of Kawakami's vision.
This is ultimately an important novel. It strikes me as a singular occurrence within the literary scene, in that it sets itself the task of presenting a sufficiently complex portrayal of a reality ¨C bullying ¨C that does not generally find its way into literary fiction, notwithstanding the range of its marked presence and manifestation in everyday existence.
4 stars. The novel's philosophical import is worth noting. To my mind, however, the partial mismanagement of the narrative's core movement constitutes too relevant an issue, and detracted, to some degree, from its literary value.
June 15, 2023
4,5/5
July 5, 2021
What was the point
September 2, 2022
This is a bleak and repellant novel, ostensibly about bullying in a Japanese middle school¡ªwith pretensions beyond that. It contains an excessive amount of unnecessarily graphic violence. I¡¯d argue that if Kawakami were a better writer, she would have achieved her thematic goal without it.
She is interested in examining the difference between those who see suffering (and, by extension, life) as having meaning and sociopathic others who do not. The problem is that the extreme brutality depicted makes the reader lose sight of the larger picture. The cruelty described becomes a perverse, even obscene end in itself¡ªthe sign of a lesser writer more interested in the sensational than the select and significant scene.
An additional issue for me was the philosophical dialogue Kawakami¡¯s fourteen-year-old characters (the bullies and the bullied) engage in. I taught kids the age of these characters for years. Never did I hear them speak like this, nor, for that matter, have I ever heard adults speak as these students do. This further weakens the novel, making it seem a kind of philosophical exercise or game rather than a credible, organic work that has something to say about how people interact with one another.
I¡¯m amazed it should¡¯ve even appeared on a major awards list. Allusions to famous paintings by Marc Chagall (as much as I myself may love those paintings) do not a masterpiece make.
She is interested in examining the difference between those who see suffering (and, by extension, life) as having meaning and sociopathic others who do not. The problem is that the extreme brutality depicted makes the reader lose sight of the larger picture. The cruelty described becomes a perverse, even obscene end in itself¡ªthe sign of a lesser writer more interested in the sensational than the select and significant scene.
An additional issue for me was the philosophical dialogue Kawakami¡¯s fourteen-year-old characters (the bullies and the bullied) engage in. I taught kids the age of these characters for years. Never did I hear them speak like this, nor, for that matter, have I ever heard adults speak as these students do. This further weakens the novel, making it seem a kind of philosophical exercise or game rather than a credible, organic work that has something to say about how people interact with one another.
I¡¯m amazed it should¡¯ve even appeared on a major awards list. Allusions to famous paintings by Marc Chagall (as much as I myself may love those paintings) do not a masterpiece make.
December 6, 2022
3.5/5
hard to read.
two teenagers relentlessly bullied by their classmates for what seems to be no reason at all (not that a reason would make it ok but maybe easier to understand)
so much emotion caught in such a short story.
hard to read.
two teenagers relentlessly bullied by their classmates for what seems to be no reason at all (not that a reason would make it ok but maybe easier to understand)
so much emotion caught in such a short story.
February 13, 2021
I love Japanese literature. When it¡¯s good...my mind and emotions are equally invested.
Both my mind and emotions were invested in ¡°Heaven¡±.
Mieko Kawakami is new to me, but I just purchased ¡°Breasts and Eggs¡±....and will look forward to reading it too.
There are stressful and devastating circumstances in ¡®Heaven¡¯.
A young boy is bullied at school.
He was kicked, punched, forced to swallow pond water, toilet water, a goldfish, scraps of vegetables from a rabbit cage, and eat chalk.
Pretty awful horrific abuse.
One day... this young boy (our narrator) receives a note from a girl named Kojima. Girls call her ¡°Hazmat¡±.
¡°She was short, with kind of dark skin. She never talked at school. Her skirt was always wrinkled, and her uniform looked old. The girls in the class picked on her for being poor and dirty¡±.
Kojima wanted this boy ( called ¡°Eyes¡± by his classmate bullies)...to meet him after school. She left the location in her note.
We never learn ¡®Eyes¡¯ proper name...but we do learn the names of a couple other class bullies.
Ninomija was the bully ringleader. Every since elementary school he was the best athlete, had all A¡¯s in school, and had that special- type of aura that his friends followed.
When Eyes receives his first few notes from Kojima....he worried it might be a prank - one of Ninomija¡¯s.
¡°I never lost sight of the possibility that this might be a trap, but something in those notes made me feel safe, however briefly, even with all my distress¡±.
So they meet.
Kojima and Eyes continue leaving each other notes. It was their only source of pleasure.
When school let out they made plans to see each other over the summer.
Kojima wanted to show him ¡®Heaven¡¯....(a painting in a museum)
¡° A painting of two lovers eating cake in a room with a red carpet and a table.¡±
Kojima tells Eyes that something was really, really sad. But they make it through. That¡¯s why they could live in perfect harmony.
¡°After everything, after all the pain, they made it here. It looks like a normal room, but it¡¯s really Heaven¡±.
There is so much brilliance in this novel. Not only do the pages fly but these unique characters make this a compelling novel.
Meiko chooses her words with careful love and arranges them to exquisite effect.....
¡°I don¡¯t really know how to say it, but it¡¯s like something¡¯s wrong, all the time, and I can¡¯t do anything to stop it. It¡¯s always there. When I¡¯m at home, when I¡¯m at school.
But, sometimes, things can be good. Even too good. Like when I¡¯m talking to you or writing notes. Those things are really good for me. I start feeling like everything¡®s okay. And that makes me happy. But, know what? That feeling like everything¡®s wrong and this feeling like everything¡®s okay, I guess a part of me wants to believe that neither one of them is, like, natural . . .
I guess I want to feel like they¡¯re both exceptions to the rule¡±.
This is an utterly absorbing - thought provoking - novel.
Thank you Netgalley, Europa Editions, and Meiko Kawakami ( I¡¯m a new fan)
Both my mind and emotions were invested in ¡°Heaven¡±.
Mieko Kawakami is new to me, but I just purchased ¡°Breasts and Eggs¡±....and will look forward to reading it too.
There are stressful and devastating circumstances in ¡®Heaven¡¯.
A young boy is bullied at school.
He was kicked, punched, forced to swallow pond water, toilet water, a goldfish, scraps of vegetables from a rabbit cage, and eat chalk.
Pretty awful horrific abuse.
One day... this young boy (our narrator) receives a note from a girl named Kojima. Girls call her ¡°Hazmat¡±.
¡°She was short, with kind of dark skin. She never talked at school. Her skirt was always wrinkled, and her uniform looked old. The girls in the class picked on her for being poor and dirty¡±.
Kojima wanted this boy ( called ¡°Eyes¡± by his classmate bullies)...to meet him after school. She left the location in her note.
We never learn ¡®Eyes¡¯ proper name...but we do learn the names of a couple other class bullies.
Ninomija was the bully ringleader. Every since elementary school he was the best athlete, had all A¡¯s in school, and had that special- type of aura that his friends followed.
When Eyes receives his first few notes from Kojima....he worried it might be a prank - one of Ninomija¡¯s.
¡°I never lost sight of the possibility that this might be a trap, but something in those notes made me feel safe, however briefly, even with all my distress¡±.
So they meet.
Kojima and Eyes continue leaving each other notes. It was their only source of pleasure.
When school let out they made plans to see each other over the summer.
Kojima wanted to show him ¡®Heaven¡¯....(a painting in a museum)
¡° A painting of two lovers eating cake in a room with a red carpet and a table.¡±
Kojima tells Eyes that something was really, really sad. But they make it through. That¡¯s why they could live in perfect harmony.
¡°After everything, after all the pain, they made it here. It looks like a normal room, but it¡¯s really Heaven¡±.
There is so much brilliance in this novel. Not only do the pages fly but these unique characters make this a compelling novel.
Meiko chooses her words with careful love and arranges them to exquisite effect.....
¡°I don¡¯t really know how to say it, but it¡¯s like something¡¯s wrong, all the time, and I can¡¯t do anything to stop it. It¡¯s always there. When I¡¯m at home, when I¡¯m at school.
But, sometimes, things can be good. Even too good. Like when I¡¯m talking to you or writing notes. Those things are really good for me. I start feeling like everything¡®s okay. And that makes me happy. But, know what? That feeling like everything¡®s wrong and this feeling like everything¡®s okay, I guess a part of me wants to believe that neither one of them is, like, natural . . .
I guess I want to feel like they¡¯re both exceptions to the rule¡±.
This is an utterly absorbing - thought provoking - novel.
Thank you Netgalley, Europa Editions, and Meiko Kawakami ( I¡¯m a new fan)
June 15, 2021
I really liked the first half, and then it kind of lost me. The dialogue got strange and partly stilted, and the plot didn't go where I hoped it would. Still interesting, but weirder than I'd liked it to be.
June 1, 2022
Now Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022
Kawakami's novella "Heaven" is set in the early 90's and tells the story of two middle schoolers who are relentlessly bullied, and the explanations they seek in order to make sense of their experiences. And make no mistake: We are talking about the kind of bullying that might feature in a movie, including lots of blood and even sexual violence. Our unnamed protagonist and narrator is a 14-year-old with a lazy eye who befriends his classmate Kojima, another kid who has to endure demeaning psychological and physical violence - what sets her apart from her classmates is that she decides to dress like a poor person.
Are the protagonist's and Kojima's special features flaws or signs of individuality? Do they have any meaning at all, isn't the reasoning behind othering individuals contingent? Not only are the probable causes of the bullying in doubt, the two also ponder coping mechanisms: Both don't fight back, but Kojima interprets this as wisdom, she almost acts like a martyr (this aspect reminded me of the movie which also connects torture to spiritual wisdom), while the narrator struggles with his ideas of humanism and morality while facing existentialist and nihilst arguments and actions.
So yes, Kawakami wrote a brutal morality tale that refrains from giving definitive answers, which connects her work to the attitude of . This has been my third Kawakami after and , both of which have been originally published after "Heaven", and all three books question the rules of society and what they do to people. I like how Kawakami does that in an unsettling way, and without being pedagogical. We have to find our individual answers ourselves.
You can listen to my interview with , jury president of the International Booker 2022, .
Kawakami's novella "Heaven" is set in the early 90's and tells the story of two middle schoolers who are relentlessly bullied, and the explanations they seek in order to make sense of their experiences. And make no mistake: We are talking about the kind of bullying that might feature in a movie, including lots of blood and even sexual violence. Our unnamed protagonist and narrator is a 14-year-old with a lazy eye who befriends his classmate Kojima, another kid who has to endure demeaning psychological and physical violence - what sets her apart from her classmates is that she decides to dress like a poor person.
Are the protagonist's and Kojima's special features flaws or signs of individuality? Do they have any meaning at all, isn't the reasoning behind othering individuals contingent? Not only are the probable causes of the bullying in doubt, the two also ponder coping mechanisms: Both don't fight back, but Kojima interprets this as wisdom, she almost acts like a martyr (this aspect reminded me of the movie which also connects torture to spiritual wisdom), while the narrator struggles with his ideas of humanism and morality while facing existentialist and nihilst arguments and actions.
So yes, Kawakami wrote a brutal morality tale that refrains from giving definitive answers, which connects her work to the attitude of . This has been my third Kawakami after and , both of which have been originally published after "Heaven", and all three books question the rules of society and what they do to people. I like how Kawakami does that in an unsettling way, and without being pedagogical. We have to find our individual answers ourselves.
You can listen to my interview with , jury president of the International Booker 2022, .
December 15, 2021
¡°Listen, if there is a hell, we're in it. And if there's a heaven, we're already there. This is it.¡±
In Mieko Kawakami's Heaven, our 14-year old protagonist faces unrelenting torment and bullying. Everyone seems complicit in this bullying, and there seems no end in sight. It is absolutely brutal. When he receives letters offering friendship from a fellow classmate, Kojima, things begin to look up. However, Kojima is also bullied and nearly as soon as this friendship begins, there is a sense of darker days ahead.
A chance encounter with one of the bullies, Momose, offers a lengthy philosophical perspective on our protagonist's torment. Momose sums it up, ¡°The weak can¡¯t handle reality. They can¡¯t deal with the pain or sadness, let alone the obvious fact that nothing in life actually has any meaning.¡± To me, this seemed like the Grand Inquisitor moment. The part of the novel, like Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, that explained human nature. In the disturbing conclusion, Kojima rejects that premise and accepts suffering, ¡°We do it for everyone who¡¯s weak everywhere, in the name of actual strength. Everything we take, all of the abuse, we do it to rise above.¡± Heavencan be tough to read, but it is quite powerful.
This is the first novel I've read by Mieko Kawakami, but it won't be the last.
In Mieko Kawakami's Heaven, our 14-year old protagonist faces unrelenting torment and bullying. Everyone seems complicit in this bullying, and there seems no end in sight. It is absolutely brutal. When he receives letters offering friendship from a fellow classmate, Kojima, things begin to look up. However, Kojima is also bullied and nearly as soon as this friendship begins, there is a sense of darker days ahead.
A chance encounter with one of the bullies, Momose, offers a lengthy philosophical perspective on our protagonist's torment. Momose sums it up, ¡°The weak can¡¯t handle reality. They can¡¯t deal with the pain or sadness, let alone the obvious fact that nothing in life actually has any meaning.¡± To me, this seemed like the Grand Inquisitor moment. The part of the novel, like Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, that explained human nature. In the disturbing conclusion, Kojima rejects that premise and accepts suffering, ¡°We do it for everyone who¡¯s weak everywhere, in the name of actual strength. Everything we take, all of the abuse, we do it to rise above.¡± Heavencan be tough to read, but it is quite powerful.
This is the first novel I've read by Mieko Kawakami, but it won't be the last.
August 31, 2021
I hate when novels are thinly veiled thought experiments with clear theses. For example: this book contained a 5 page essay on nihilism in the middle, disguised as a speech by an unbelievably eloquent middle school bully. Truly ridiculous.
June 14, 2023
I loved so much about this book - the writing, the characterisation, its themes, the power of its emotions - although I wasn't quite sure what to make of the ending.
October 27, 2022
I really suffered through this. A painful book which leaves me so many questions about what is morally wrong, what we can question or not about youth, about laws, about life. I loved and hated it. I thought it was too much, and then I thought is this something that happens? yes it can happen. I can simplify it by saying it is a novel about bullying, but it is more than that. Kawakami is a writer who has a totally different angle than other japanese writers I have loved, but I find she is writing necessary stories. Very recommended.
August 13, 2021
"We have got to dispel this myth that bullying is just a normal rite of passage." (Barack Obama)
Heaven is certainly not based on a theme of "kids will be kids". It is a long hard look at the cruelties inflicted upon one another as young individuals roam the perimeters of the school grounds, and way beyond, looking for their victims. It is the very powerless who prey upon the familiar powerless.
Mieko Kawakami is an award winning international novelist who is noted for her insights into the dilemmas of society. This is a translation of her work. As in all translations, we ponder into the suggestion that sometimes the turn of a word or phrase can have an impact into conveying the true flame of her intention. Although there are some indications of this throughout Heaven, the essence of the message is still ripe and still impinging.
Kawakami introduces us to the fictional character of a fourteen year old boy who suffers with the agony of being born with Lazy Eye (Amblyopia or Strabismus) in which the eye often wanders inward or outward and decreases vision in children. Shy by nature, this young boy, as with millions of others, will be ridiculed for his outward appearance and demeanor. Prepare yourself for the explicit demoralizing and brutal exchanges he has with the bullies at his school. I shutter to think of all those of all ages who carry out their lives immersed in this horrendous fishbowl of life. Kawakami does not insert one adult willing to intervene. Is this by design or is this by experience?
But one day the young boy reaches into his desk and comes upon a note that he will later realize as being written by Kojima, a girl plagued with ridicule for being poor and unkempt. Their newly found friendship is at the core of this novel. And we, as readers, will experience the agony of their daily lives.
"But I wasn't crying because I was sad. I guess I was crying because we had nowhere else to go, no choice but to go on living in this world. Crying because we had no other world to choose, and crying at everything before us, everything around us."
And how do we fix that?
Courage is the fire that burns out the toxic flame of bullying before it scorches the earth. Kawakami offers no suggestions in an Afterword. I wish that she had. Perhaps vigilance is key, and even moreso, a supportive environment for the voiceless to be heard with action rather than just promises.
Heaven is certainly not based on a theme of "kids will be kids". It is a long hard look at the cruelties inflicted upon one another as young individuals roam the perimeters of the school grounds, and way beyond, looking for their victims. It is the very powerless who prey upon the familiar powerless.
Mieko Kawakami is an award winning international novelist who is noted for her insights into the dilemmas of society. This is a translation of her work. As in all translations, we ponder into the suggestion that sometimes the turn of a word or phrase can have an impact into conveying the true flame of her intention. Although there are some indications of this throughout Heaven, the essence of the message is still ripe and still impinging.
Kawakami introduces us to the fictional character of a fourteen year old boy who suffers with the agony of being born with Lazy Eye (Amblyopia or Strabismus) in which the eye often wanders inward or outward and decreases vision in children. Shy by nature, this young boy, as with millions of others, will be ridiculed for his outward appearance and demeanor. Prepare yourself for the explicit demoralizing and brutal exchanges he has with the bullies at his school. I shutter to think of all those of all ages who carry out their lives immersed in this horrendous fishbowl of life. Kawakami does not insert one adult willing to intervene. Is this by design or is this by experience?
But one day the young boy reaches into his desk and comes upon a note that he will later realize as being written by Kojima, a girl plagued with ridicule for being poor and unkempt. Their newly found friendship is at the core of this novel. And we, as readers, will experience the agony of their daily lives.
"But I wasn't crying because I was sad. I guess I was crying because we had nowhere else to go, no choice but to go on living in this world. Crying because we had no other world to choose, and crying at everything before us, everything around us."
And how do we fix that?
Courage is the fire that burns out the toxic flame of bullying before it scorches the earth. Kawakami offers no suggestions in an Afterword. I wish that she had. Perhaps vigilance is key, and even moreso, a supportive environment for the voiceless to be heard with action rather than just promises.
June 27, 2023
By?y momenty, gdy ta ksi??ka wy?ciska?a mi oddech z p?uc, by?a jak uderzenie pi??ci? w brzuch. Nie zawsze i chyba nie tak mocno jak tego oczekiwa?am, ale to bardzo ciekawa, bardzo smutna i nietuzinkowa ksi??ka o cichym cierpieniu.
Na pewno przeczytam kolejne tytu?y tej autorki.
Na pewno przeczytam kolejne tytu?y tej autorki.
June 18, 2021
FINAL REVIEW // In high school, I was practically friends with everyone. I was friendly with all the different social hierarchies. Perhaps this is because I didn¡¯t really self-identify with any one group. I made sure to talk to everyone: from the popular kids to the students considered to be the bottom of the totem pole. I have seen people getting bullied. It was always strange to see people who I considered friends bullying people who I also considered friends. And yet I said nothing. I didn¡¯t tell the bullies to stop, I didn¡¯t step in to defend the ones being bullied, and I didn¡¯t tell an authority figure. This book had me revisiting that time period of my life. It made me wonder: why do people bully others? Why do bullies mostly get away with it? It made me contemplate why people stand by the sidelines and do nothing? It made me think about why when we know it¡¯s wrong, we still gather in groups to watch the ¡°spectacle.¡± And most of all, it made me come to understand that as much as I thought I understood the anguish bullied kids go through, I couldn¡¯t possibly fathom how much pain and misery it must be to wake up every morning, knowing you¡¯ll have to face the fresh hell that will be unleashed on you when you get to school. Basically, I was only getting the bare minimum, only pieces of the whole story: what about all the times I did not see? What is it truly like to live with endless agony? Why did I stay silent?
.
This book dives into a lot of these feelings, questions, and contemplations. We follow a 14-year old boy who is given the nickname ¡°Eyes¡± because of his lazy eye. He is tormented at school by his peers, especially a threatening group of boys from his class. He develops a friendship with a girl named Kojima, who is also a victim of bullying albeit for a different reason. What a heartbreaking, devastating, and absorbing story. And hard-hitting. Kawakami doesn¡¯t shy away from the brutality and barbarism of bullying. If you¡¯re an emotional reader, this book is going to break your heart into tiny pieces¡several times. And if you were/are a victim of bullying, you may want to steer clear of this one¡ªJust a friendly heads up. The bullying scenes are extremely intense and detailed. There is one particularly harrowing scene that seems to go on and on, which had me feeling deeply unsettled and left a lump in my throat. You¡¯re witness to every dark thought, every act of desperation, every cry for help. And the reading experience makes you feel powerless.
.
Although this is a story of trauma, emotional fragility, and helplessness, there is also a lot of beauty to be found: friendship, love, and loyalty. And let¡¯s not forget: breathtaking imagery. The last two pages are gorgeous. And can I say, ¡°Heaven¡± is the perfect title for this book.
Emotional, philosophical, extraordinary. One of my favorite books of the year for sure. I need to read Kawakami¡¯s other books, like, now. This book left me breathless¡ and broken.
.
This book dives into a lot of these feelings, questions, and contemplations. We follow a 14-year old boy who is given the nickname ¡°Eyes¡± because of his lazy eye. He is tormented at school by his peers, especially a threatening group of boys from his class. He develops a friendship with a girl named Kojima, who is also a victim of bullying albeit for a different reason. What a heartbreaking, devastating, and absorbing story. And hard-hitting. Kawakami doesn¡¯t shy away from the brutality and barbarism of bullying. If you¡¯re an emotional reader, this book is going to break your heart into tiny pieces¡several times. And if you were/are a victim of bullying, you may want to steer clear of this one¡ªJust a friendly heads up. The bullying scenes are extremely intense and detailed. There is one particularly harrowing scene that seems to go on and on, which had me feeling deeply unsettled and left a lump in my throat. You¡¯re witness to every dark thought, every act of desperation, every cry for help. And the reading experience makes you feel powerless.
.
Although this is a story of trauma, emotional fragility, and helplessness, there is also a lot of beauty to be found: friendship, love, and loyalty. And let¡¯s not forget: breathtaking imagery. The last two pages are gorgeous. And can I say, ¡°Heaven¡± is the perfect title for this book.
Emotional, philosophical, extraordinary. One of my favorite books of the year for sure. I need to read Kawakami¡¯s other books, like, now. This book left me breathless¡ and broken.
August 9, 2023
Heaven is a powerful and disturbing book about bullying. It is also about endurance. There are some profound observations and an examination of what victims of bullying may be thinking. We also get a glimpse into the thinking of one of the bullies.
I always tell my students to look for the helpers and upstanders when witnessing or reading about horrible events. Sadly, there are no upstanders in this book. Two students that are being bullied find each other. They have several discussions about strength and weakness. How hurting and crying are different. These quotes are a good representation of the types of exchanges between the characters and one of their interpretations of the bullying.
¡°The other kids, the rest of our class, they don¡¯t understand anything. They have no idea what anything means. They don¡¯t know how they make other people feel, and they¡¯ve never stopped to think about other people¡¯s pain. They¡¯re just following along, doing what everyone else is doing.¡±
¡°You think about how other people feel. You¡¯re so kind. It makes sense. Because we¡¯re always in pain, we know exactly what it means to hurt somebody else.¡±
Above all, my biggest take away from Heaven is the power of the spoken and written word, to heal and to harm. One person has the power to lift someone up (bring them closer to Heaven) or knock them down (make their life Hell). I loved that the characters correspond through letters. A lost, but powerful art. Letters are physical reminders that bring the reader back to a specific time/place and connect them to the writer. Rereading and looking at those letters can bring healing and light during times of darkness and isolation.
Heaven is hard to read because of the repeated, detailed episodes of bullying, but it is important to read on and bear witness, to feel discomfort and unease. For through this discomfort comes awareness and hopefully inspires a change in our world for the betterment of all.
I always tell my students to look for the helpers and upstanders when witnessing or reading about horrible events. Sadly, there are no upstanders in this book. Two students that are being bullied find each other. They have several discussions about strength and weakness. How hurting and crying are different. These quotes are a good representation of the types of exchanges between the characters and one of their interpretations of the bullying.
¡°The other kids, the rest of our class, they don¡¯t understand anything. They have no idea what anything means. They don¡¯t know how they make other people feel, and they¡¯ve never stopped to think about other people¡¯s pain. They¡¯re just following along, doing what everyone else is doing.¡±
¡°You think about how other people feel. You¡¯re so kind. It makes sense. Because we¡¯re always in pain, we know exactly what it means to hurt somebody else.¡±
Above all, my biggest take away from Heaven is the power of the spoken and written word, to heal and to harm. One person has the power to lift someone up (bring them closer to Heaven) or knock them down (make their life Hell). I loved that the characters correspond through letters. A lost, but powerful art. Letters are physical reminders that bring the reader back to a specific time/place and connect them to the writer. Rereading and looking at those letters can bring healing and light during times of darkness and isolation.
Heaven is hard to read because of the repeated, detailed episodes of bullying, but it is important to read on and bear witness, to feel discomfort and unease. For through this discomfort comes awareness and hopefully inspires a change in our world for the betterment of all.
January 29, 2023
I haven't hated a book this much since The Scarlet Letter, and that says something. Did I read a different book than everyone else? With 0% 1 star reviews, hating this book so much almost feels like an achievement. I wanted to stop reading so badly, but somehow forced myself through the entire thing.
The writing was bad. Just really bad, from weird and boring scenery descriptions to unnatural dialogue, especially for so called fourteen-year-olds. The graphic and emotionally intense scenes were written in an extremely detached, observing manner. As if listing items on a to-do list instead of describing traumatic events. Because of this, none of the events held any weight. The characters, especially the main character, had zero personality. None of the dialogues and monologues and internal thoughts were properly thought out. And they were repeated, over and over, especially at the end of the book. The bullies had the most personality in the entire book, and their only trait was being mean. The bullies monologue felt like it was being said by someone who read a single psychology book and now considered himself to be the next Nietzsche, and it was very odd coming from a middle school child. Perhaps Kawakami's true wish was to write a philosophy book. The story never really went anywhere, we sort of saw a friendship develop but it was shallow and barely a friendship at all. If this book has a plot, I can't find it. It got slightly better nearing the end, but not enough to deserve a second star.
Overall, I was excited for this book but it has been nothing except a let down.
The writing was bad. Just really bad, from weird and boring scenery descriptions to unnatural dialogue, especially for so called fourteen-year-olds. The graphic and emotionally intense scenes were written in an extremely detached, observing manner. As if listing items on a to-do list instead of describing traumatic events. Because of this, none of the events held any weight. The characters, especially the main character, had zero personality. None of the dialogues and monologues and internal thoughts were properly thought out. And they were repeated, over and over, especially at the end of the book. The bullies had the most personality in the entire book, and their only trait was being mean. The bullies monologue felt like it was being said by someone who read a single psychology book and now considered himself to be the next Nietzsche, and it was very odd coming from a middle school child. Perhaps Kawakami's true wish was to write a philosophy book. The story never really went anywhere, we sort of saw a friendship develop but it was shallow and barely a friendship at all. If this book has a plot, I can't find it. It got slightly better nearing the end, but not enough to deserve a second star.
Overall, I was excited for this book but it has been nothing except a let down.
May 30, 2022
? ? ? ? ? ?
3 ? stars
A few weeks ago I read Mieko Kawakami's acclaimed Breasts and Eggs and suffice to say that I was not a fan. While Heaven was clearly written by the same author of Breasts and Eggs (both novels implement similar imagery and even use the same metaphor comparing the legs of a young girl to poles) I was able to appreciate it a lot more.
In spite of its brevity Heaven is by no means an easy-going story, in fact, it often verges on being Misery Porn?: large chunks of the narrative depict in minute detail the bullying our fourteen-year-old protagonist is subjected to. The novel raises some interesting questions about bullying and nonconformity. Why do some become perpetrators while others are victims? Should our main character respond to the deluge of abuse he receives from his classmates? Why do the other boys in the class torment him? Is it because of his appearance?
While quite a few of the discussions between the teenage characters did not come across as all that convincing (they expressed themselves in a way that seemed far older or that suggested a worldliness that went at odds with their experiences so far) I still found myself engaged in the narrative.
There are a lot of scenes that verge on being gratuitous: we get painfully detailed descriptions of our MC being beaten, humiliated, and harassed. His friendship with Kojima, a classmate who is bullied by the female students, provided some welcome respite from the sections relating the bullying. The two bond quickly, and in spite of their attempts not to discuss school and the way they are treated by other students, they do eventually confined in one another. Kojima's view of the whole bullying 'thing' while by no means healthy enables her to make 'sense' of her circumstances.
As with Breasts and Eggs we have characters giving seemingly endless monologues that last pages at the time. While I did not mind learning more about Kojima, her home life, and her peculiar philosophy, I did not care one bit about Momose's spiel towards the end of the novel. The narrative seemed intent on making him seem mysterious and mature but I thought him shallow. He did not really come across as a credible fourteen-year-old, more like a parody of the worldly teen who already speaks so many truths about the world (puh-lease). Our main character does a lot of navel-gazing but unlike in Breasts and Eggs, here it seemed fitting. He is young and going through a lot so it seemed natural for him to try and make sense of what was happening to him.
The ending was slightly disappointing and I probably would have given this a higher rating if I hadn't been for that predictable 'show-down'. I would not necessarily recommend this to those who have a low threshold for narratives depicting bullying (extensively and graphicly). Thanks to a manga series by Keiko Suenobu called Life which kind of traumatised me when I first read it around the age of 12 I am somewhat inoculated against this kind of stuff. While Heaven was by no means a breezy or perfectly executed read I did find it to be poignant and for the most part realistic. If anything it has elevated Kawakami in my eyes.
ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
3 ? stars
A few weeks ago I read Mieko Kawakami's acclaimed Breasts and Eggs and suffice to say that I was not a fan. While Heaven was clearly written by the same author of Breasts and Eggs (both novels implement similar imagery and even use the same metaphor comparing the legs of a young girl to poles) I was able to appreciate it a lot more.
In spite of its brevity Heaven is by no means an easy-going story, in fact, it often verges on being Misery Porn?: large chunks of the narrative depict in minute detail the bullying our fourteen-year-old protagonist is subjected to. The novel raises some interesting questions about bullying and nonconformity. Why do some become perpetrators while others are victims? Should our main character respond to the deluge of abuse he receives from his classmates? Why do the other boys in the class torment him? Is it because of his appearance?
While quite a few of the discussions between the teenage characters did not come across as all that convincing (they expressed themselves in a way that seemed far older or that suggested a worldliness that went at odds with their experiences so far) I still found myself engaged in the narrative.
There are a lot of scenes that verge on being gratuitous: we get painfully detailed descriptions of our MC being beaten, humiliated, and harassed. His friendship with Kojima, a classmate who is bullied by the female students, provided some welcome respite from the sections relating the bullying. The two bond quickly, and in spite of their attempts not to discuss school and the way they are treated by other students, they do eventually confined in one another. Kojima's view of the whole bullying 'thing' while by no means healthy enables her to make 'sense' of her circumstances.
As with Breasts and Eggs we have characters giving seemingly endless monologues that last pages at the time. While I did not mind learning more about Kojima, her home life, and her peculiar philosophy, I did not care one bit about Momose's spiel towards the end of the novel. The narrative seemed intent on making him seem mysterious and mature but I thought him shallow. He did not really come across as a credible fourteen-year-old, more like a parody of the worldly teen who already speaks so many truths about the world (puh-lease). Our main character does a lot of navel-gazing but unlike in Breasts and Eggs, here it seemed fitting. He is young and going through a lot so it seemed natural for him to try and make sense of what was happening to him.
The ending was slightly disappointing and I probably would have given this a higher rating if I hadn't been for that predictable 'show-down'. I would not necessarily recommend this to those who have a low threshold for narratives depicting bullying (extensively and graphicly). Thanks to a manga series by Keiko Suenobu called Life which kind of traumatised me when I first read it around the age of 12 I am somewhat inoculated against this kind of stuff. While Heaven was by no means a breezy or perfectly executed read I did find it to be poignant and for the most part realistic. If anything it has elevated Kawakami in my eyes.
ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
January 3, 2022
People really seem to love this book, and I¡¯m grateful to see it successfully accomplishes something for others, especially as the ample violent bullying scenes are pretty excruciating to read. Certainly, the topic of bullying is a worthy and important one.
Unfortunately, this book did not succeed for me on any level, either as a story or as metaphor or as a philosophical tale or otherwise, and did not provoke either hope or new insight on my part.
I will say that since I work in mental health and with survivors of interpersonal violence, it¡¯s possible I just may personally need to continue to stick primarily to nonfiction when it comes to serious engagement with such issues.
I should also add - I haven¡¯t read Breasts and Eggs, but I did read Ms. Ice Sandwich and really enjoyed it as a poignant exploration of a child¡¯s loneliness and grief/loss, exploration of insider/outsider issues, and nascent, developing sense of the appearance and value of belonging/non-belonging and conformity/non-conformity.
But, I found that book quite exceedingly different than this one in that the story itself ¡°showed rather than told¡± about the ideas therein. There are some precocious children in that one, too, but they remain grounded in reality; the story doesn¡¯t devolve into illustrative metaphor with embedded philosophical exposition. Nor does it contain practically unstomachable scenes of eventually near-fatal and sexualized violence.
Unfortunately, this book did not succeed for me on any level, either as a story or as metaphor or as a philosophical tale or otherwise, and did not provoke either hope or new insight on my part.
I will say that since I work in mental health and with survivors of interpersonal violence, it¡¯s possible I just may personally need to continue to stick primarily to nonfiction when it comes to serious engagement with such issues.
I should also add - I haven¡¯t read Breasts and Eggs, but I did read Ms. Ice Sandwich and really enjoyed it as a poignant exploration of a child¡¯s loneliness and grief/loss, exploration of insider/outsider issues, and nascent, developing sense of the appearance and value of belonging/non-belonging and conformity/non-conformity.
But, I found that book quite exceedingly different than this one in that the story itself ¡°showed rather than told¡± about the ideas therein. There are some precocious children in that one, too, but they remain grounded in reality; the story doesn¡¯t devolve into illustrative metaphor with embedded philosophical exposition. Nor does it contain practically unstomachable scenes of eventually near-fatal and sexualized violence.
June 20, 2021
"then it hit me: dying is just like sleeping. you only know you're sleeping when you wake up the next day, but if the morning never comes, you sleep forever."
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