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My review of Heaven is published at .

“It’s Heaven, the place I want to show you.��

Heaven is Mieko Kawakami’s heartbreaking novel about middle-school bullying. Originally published in Japan in 2009, Heaven was translated into English in 2021 following the success of Kawakami’s Breasts and Eggs (2019), which released in 2020 in the anglophone world. I recently had the pleasure of buddy reading Heaven with the wonderful Tori Tecken and offer my thoughts below.

Heaven takes place in 1991 and is narrated by an unnamed fourteen-year-old boy who is subjected to a horrifying level of bullying at school. A glimmer of hope appears in the form of secret notes left by his classmate, Kojima, a shy girl who endures an equally dreadful amount of bullying from her female classmates.

The relationship between Kojima and the narrator forms the emotional core of the novel as they seek to console each other and find meaning in suffering:

“What matters is that all the pain and all the sadness have meaning.��

There is an enduring yet endearing awkwardness in their relationship, which spans the entire novel.

The theme of broken homes also hits hard for both protagonists in Heaven. All the adults in their lives seem oblivious to their suffering. There is also an undercurrent of colorism in how the darker-skinned Kojima is treated at school.

I love Mieko Kawakami’s simple yet poetic writing style and the honest way in which she captures emotion. Kawakami’s sparse yet incisive prose recalls that of Banana Yoshimoto, another one of my favorite Japanese authors. Kawakami’s representation of pain is especially poignant:

“People are different, though. Sometimes you can’t see the scars. But there’s a lot of pain, I think.��

For me, the cruelty exhibited in Heaven hits especially hard given its real-world setting and the bullying I personally experienced as a student (which was not nearly as bad as in the book).

Mieko Kawakami frames bullying as part of a greater philosophical clash between existentialism and nihilism. One of the bullies, Momose, spews nihilistic arguments about the absence of meaning in the world. The complete lack of morality and unchecked abuse from the bullies reminded me a bit of William Golding’s classic, Lord of the Flies.

Altogether, Heaven is a deeply emotional and thought-provoking read which offers an unflinchingly honest representation of adolescent bullying. Readers should be aware of multiple trigger warnings, including physical and emotional abuse, major depression, suicidal thoughts, and sexual bullying.