A little too subtle in places

books:

	• The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears Dinaw Mengestu Riverhead Trade, 2008 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 37 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A captivating read!

This is a beautifully written book, which affords those of us who are born Americans insight into the thoughts, feelings and perspectives of immigrants, who are exiled forever from their native countries and who strive to find meaningful lives in this country of seeming opportunity and undeniable contradiction. I loved it!

Stunning debut

I just listened to the audio version of this novel from my library during a couple weeks of commuting and I must say I found it entrancing. This is some of the most lyrical writing I've come across in years. The narrator Dion Graham is outstanding as well. Though it would admittedly be a challenge (lack of outward action) I could also imagine this book being remade into a very good and powerful independent film if it was carefully cast and tightly directed. Interestingly the story somewhat reminded me of the great movie "Do the Right Thing", though in a much quieter, less explosive and more personal context. Both obviously deal beautiful in their own ways with the intense friction of change and different cultures coming together in small urban spaces undergoing rapid change. It also shows how alone we can be even in our most crowded places.

One question about the timeline. I've read that the novel is set in the 1970's but at the start of the story the main character Sepha has been in America for 17 years and the events which caused him to flee surrounding his father's execution are described as being in 1977. That would put the events of the novel in the 1994-1995 period. Also, as a native Washingtonian I can say that the Logan Circle and surrounding Shaw and Columbia Heights neighborhoods didn't even START to gentrify until the crack epidemic calmed down around the mid to late 1990's. The novel is frustratingly vague about its time period and at least in the audio version the story bounces around without much of a hint at first about which time period Sepha's describing at different points in time. Other than that relatively minor quirk, though, it's a wonderful first effort and I'll be very interested to see where Mr. Mengestu's career goes from here. He's a real talent!

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Beautiful ? maybe, but somber

Heavy, plodding story that picks up mid way. Half drawn characters which leave a lot for the reader to assume. Mengetsu pulls it together at the very end and the title is indeed explained.

Interesting Immigrant Tale

Another great, young writer. I look forward to reading more from him. I liked this book very much. His writing is just so lovely, heartbraking. I loved it being in D.C., eye-popping realism. Just so immediate and real. A lot of warmth in this writing.

A little too subtle in places

"The beautiful things that heaven bears" is a line from a passage in Dante's Inferno, in which Dante is emerging from hell. According to one of the characters in the book, "no one can understand that line like an African because that is what we lived through. Hell every day with only glimpses of heaven in between." The passage is definitely a metaphor for Sepha's story, whose existence seems to be just one long, endless trudge through life. I enjoy books like this that give me a glimpse of life in a different culture than my own, but I think that in some ways this book is a little too subtle. For example, when the "series of racial incidents disturbs the community", I wouldn't have known they were racial incidents if the back of the book hadn't said so. They could just as easily been class-based as race-based. Also, the pacing of the story was difficult for me to follow. The story jumps back and forth in time, and once in a while I would lose track of where I was in the timeline. I think I would have enjoyed learning more about the culture than just about Sepha. Overall, this was a well-written novel, but it left me wanting more -- or maybe, just something different.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

A literary debut hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "a great American novel." Awards Include:
Finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction
Winner of the Guardian First Book Prize
New York Times Notable Book
Winner of the National Book Foundation's ?5 Under 35? Award
Recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship
Winner of the Prix du Premier Roman
Named the Seattle Reads Selection of 2008

Seventeen years ago, Sepha Stephanos fled the Ethiopian Revolution for a new start in the United States. Now he finds himself running a failing grocery store in a poor African-American section of Washington, D.C., his only companions two fellow African immigrants who share his bitter nostalgia and longing for his home continent. Years ago and worlds away Sepha could never have imagined a life of such isolation. As his environment begins to change, hope comes in the form of a friendship with new neighbors Judith and Naomi, a white woman and her biracial daughter. But when a series of racial incidents disturbs the community, Sepha may lose everything all over again.

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