Heaven by Mieko Kawakami is a poignant, unflinching exploration of bullying and friendship. Through the eyes of a 14-year-old boy with a lazy eye, Kawakami delves into the pain and resilience of adolescence. Her evocative prose and deep empathy make this novel a powerful, thought-provoking read.

Initially surprised by the subject at hand, I appreciated the interiority of the narrative. Kawakami writes about loneliness so deftly and captures youth in Japan in an intriguing way. Love the prose, the superb translation.

Heaven, ironically, centres itself around an unnamed narrator nicknamed ‘Eyes’ who is bullied. Relentlessly. He is befriended by a classmate, Kojima, who is also bullied and while their day-to-day at school is hell, they begin to find solace in each other’s company. Perhaps this is their little slice of heaven.

While bullying is a huge, huge issue in Japan, I don’t think Mieko’s point was to raise awareness to this specifically but perhaps to draw attention to bullying in general. Because these people exist everywhere. Middle school is tough and it’s made even harder when you’re the victim of daily attacks. I do not have any sensitivities to topics but the bullying is vicious, written graphically, calculated and oftentimes uncomfortable to read so if this is a triggering theme for you, please read reviews before going in. Nothing is sugar coated in this book. My only gripe with it is that there never seemed to be any adults or teachers anywhere. Ever.

I read this book with a friend and one of the unanswerable questions I posed was, why are kids so mean? What are these kids going to think when they grow up and look back at what they did to their peers? Yes, these questions may read naively/rhetorically/insert your own adverb if you wish. I know I know the answer to at least one of those but I still asked it anyway. Bullying is a learned behaviour and I do not understand how adults can put children in situations which lead them to bully others.

This book affected me which means I will continue to read Mieko’s work.

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami (translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd) is a heartbreaking, yet uplifting story of two outcasts who find and protect each other through a horrible year of school bullying.

The narrator is targeted because he has a lazy eye. His classmates call him “Eyes,” and the reader knows no other name for him. Kojima is bullied for her lack of hygiene. They bond over their common experience and learn to understand each other and themselves better through the process. They find comfort in exchanging notes and in the handful of times they meet in person.

The story is told from the boy’s perspective but is propelled by the girl. Kojima initiates the notes, arranges the meetings and she plays life coach to them both. This story demonstrates how social interaction is a necessary component for self-understanding. Neither has had sufficient positive social interaction, so that their new relationship is revelatory for them. Their missives become long and meandering. They evolve into a means for them to delve into their own feelings. The few meetings they can safely maneuver develop into the same kind of emotional exploration.

The boy gives in to his role as a victim. Kojima, on the other hand, does not see the two of them as victims. She pities the bullies who are stuck in their ways, not knowing what they are doing, not having any real motivation, and blindly following others. Kojima sees her pain and sadness as having a purpose.

“But it isn’t meaningless. When it’s all over, we’ll reach a place, somewhere or something we could never reach without having gone through everything we’ve gone through. Know what I mean?”

Kawakami manages to place us squarely in the heads of these adolescents. Reader beware, your empathy will be stretched to its limits by the scenes of bullying, but the poignancy of the relationship between the two main characters is too beautiful to miss.

The translation is rendered masterfully by Sam Bett and David Boyd. They were able to achieve the difficult task of capturing the language of young teenagers for a readership in different cultures and make it believable.

In an era when we may be dropping our defenses around bullying, having implemented so many programs to address this scourge, do we believe, perhaps, that we have done all that we can do? Have we become complacent? Heaven is a harsh reminder that the suffering has not stopped. Although the subject may seem worn out, Kawakami manages to make it new. These children have unique attitudes towards their plight, and the author manages to include enough humor and heart to make the reader believe in some hope, without resolving the story in a neat bow. With Heaven, Mieko Kawakami has proven once again that she can produce a social critique while remaining entertaining.

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami (translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd) is a heartbreaking, yet uplifting story of two outcasts who find and protect each other through a horrible year of school bullying.

The narrator is targeted because he has a lazy eye. His classmates call him “Eyes,” and the reader knows no other name for him. Kojima is bullied for her lack of hygiene. They bond over their common experience and learn to understand each other and themselves better through the process. They find comfort in exchanging notes and in the handful of times they meet in person.

The story is told from the boy’s perspective but is propelled by the girl. Kojima initiates the notes, arranges the meetings and she plays life coach to them both. This story demonstrates how social interaction is a necessary component for self-understanding. Neither has had sufficient positive social interaction, so that their new relationship is revelatory for them. Their missives become long and meandering. They evolve into a means for them to delve into their own feelings. The few meetings they can safely maneuver develop into the same kind of emotional exploration.

The boy gives in to his role as a victim. Kojima, on the other hand, does not see the two of them as victims. She pities the bullies who are stuck in their ways, not knowing what they are doing, not having any real motivation, and blindly following others. Kojima sees her pain and sadness as having a purpose.

“But it isn’t meaningless. When it’s all over, we’ll reach a place, somewhere or something we could never reach without having gone through everything we’ve gone through. Know what I mean?”

Kawakami manages to place us squarely in the heads of these adolescents. Reader beware, your empathy will be stretched to its limits by the scenes of bullying, but the poignancy of the relationship between the two main characters is too beautiful to miss.

The translation is rendered masterfully by Sam Bett and David Boyd. They were able to achieve the difficult task of capturing the language of young teenagers for a readership in different cultures and make it believable.

In an era when we may be dropping our defenses around bullying, having implemented so many programs to address this scourge, do we believe, perhaps, that we have done all that we can do? Have we become complacent? Heaven is a harsh reminder that the suffering has not stopped. Although the subject may seem worn out, Kawakami manages to make it new. These children have unique attitudes towards their plight, and the author manages to include enough humor and heart to make the reader believe in some hope, without resolving the story in a neat bow. With Heaven, Mieko Kawakami has proven once again that she can produce a social critique while remaining entertaining.

this was a hard book to read. Very heavy. It does bring attention to bullying but I was very uncomfortable reading it. That said, well written.

The book opens in a Japanese classroom as "Eyes," the unnamed protagonist and narrator finds a note in his desk from his classmate Kojima, asking to be friends. Eyes and Kojima are relentlessly bullied at school, often violently, and do not have any other friends before they make their connection. The story follows their unusual friendship as well as the development of "Eyes'" sense of agency amongst people who assume he has none. I enjoyed the anonymity of the town where the characters live in Japan because it allowed the reader to focus on the universal conditions that "Eyes" and Kojima were experiencing. Every middle schooler can identify with bullying and every adolescent can remember questioning personal adequacy amidst the doldrums of required school obligations. Because this book was originally published in 2009 in Japan and has only recently been translated to English, Kawakami is not using the novel to explain elements of Japanese culture to her readers. Instead, you get to enjoy the universality of the story against the backdrop of little differences from life in America, from a convenient healthcare system to the structure of the school term. Although the book alternates between feeling depressing to overly quirky, Kawakami is a beautiful writer and I plan on reading more of her work.

Quite liked this odd little novel about a pair of bullied teenagers with an extremely pessimistic outlook on the world. It's my first taste of Mieko Kawakami's fiction but I would definitely look out for more.

Mieko Kawakami's Heaven deals with school bullying, an often hard to revisit topic as an adult. Adolescent children are often brutal and subject their peers to mindless acts of unempathetic cruelty, even so, some actions depicted in Heaven are hard to stomach. Heaven revolves around the life of an unnamed narrator a teenage boy who is picked on by his classmates. While looking for agency and companionship, he makes friends with an equally bullied girl Kojima who keeps cutting herself as a way of coping: "Yeah. Like, when I'm cutting things, in my head, I keep telling myself: okay, this is normal," she says. Together they navigate the brutalities of high school. It's a heavy read, because of these themes, even though it's not a hefty book. It's also a tremendous success for Kawakami's writing that she makes the book an engrossing read by infusing so much life into her characters.

IN MIEKO KAWAKAMI’S 2009 novel Heaven, now available from Europa Editions in an English translation by Sam Bett and David Boyd, the Akutagawa Prize–winning author of Breasts and Eggs (2008; Europa Editions, 2020) turns her eye toward the sufferings and cruelties of adolescence.

A highly interior novel, Heaven locks us in, maybe even traps us, in the viewpoint of its unnamed 14-year-old protagonist. Bullied in school because of a lazy eye, he approaches the world with apprehension, and Kawakami really makes us feel his urge to look down, to make himself small, so as not to attract unwanted attention. He is befriended by his classmate Kojima, also a bullying victim. Our narrator and Kojima begin writing secret notes to each other, and soon enough they’re meeting in the school stairwell near the rooftop, talking about everything and nothing. The narrator finds himself drawn to Kojima, even though he describes her several times as reeking, a result of not bathing for days. When these two characters are together, it feels like a YA coming-of-age story, though in fact it is a tale with highly graphic scenes of violence. In one freeing chapter, the narrator and Kojima take the train to an art museum. Away from their tormentors, the novel opens up, letting us escape the claustrophobia of the school scenes and bask in the budding friendship — this precious, secret, fragile thing that needs protection from their real lives. They only ever talk about their experience of bullying in passing, as if it wasn’t the fulcrum of their friendship in the first place.

Heaven is written in a direct, unadorned style; the language is so straightforward, verging on plain, that the depictions of bullying seem shockingly brutal and yet, for the narrator, blandly normalized — almost a reportage, one fact after another. When he visits an old park for the first time, he automatically starts imagining how the setting could supply ingenious props for his tormentors to torture him. He counts the nuggets of animal leavings in a sandbox, for example, thinking that his bullies might make him eat them. This line of thinking might sound extreme, until a bit later on when the narrator catalogs all the things his bullies have actually made him swallow, an inventory of abuse. These unflinching details, and the matter-of-factness of the narrator’s daily terror, surprisingly don’t overwhelm and desensitize, which is a tribute to Kawakami’s writing. None of it feels gratuitous, just heartbreakingly inevitable, a steadfast fact of the narrator’s life, as basic and inescapable as the climate:

"At the end of June, the rain came all at once. If you tried opening a window for fresh air, the moisture filled the room. Everywhere was just as stuffy as the school. During art class, Ninomiya said let’s make a railroad, and told his friends to hold me down and spread my fingers while he shot staples into my palm. The little holes they left stung worse than bees. Dark clouds hung in the sky for days. The smell of rain was everywhere."

The prose evolves throughout the novel, as if tracking the rising action — the ever-escalating scenes of cruelty, but also the narrator’s growth, his burgeoning maturity. By the middle of the book, the tenor has changed slightly, the spareness giving way to more highly descriptive sentences: “The bed of earth stretching like a plank between the trees had turned rich brown with moisture. I took a deep breath through my nose, but the smell of rain was gone. All the same, the soil was moist, and the slurp and pop under my shoes threatened to suck them off into the earth.” With this change in tone comes a deeper lingering on the narrator’s dread, a slowing down to keep us in scenes of horror longer. Ninomiya tells the narrator that punishment is coming, and Kawakami takes us through his stages of terror, as though we’re trapped in a falling elevator, clinging fruitlessly to the walls, with certain doom rushing to meet us. As the terrible climax approaches, we keep asking ourselves, is Kawakami really going to make us read through this? We have no doubt that she is perfectly capable of doing so, and our knowledge of her ability to keep us looking, adds to the horror of the scene.

The novel’s exploration of bullying hinges on the characters’ appearances. It is not lost on us that the narrator’s bullies are the attractive kids in school. Ninomiya is described as beautiful; Momose, another bully, as handsome. By contrast, the narrator feels so unattractive that he avoids mirrors, and Kojima is always described as unkempt and stinky, her sneakers and uniform dirty, her shirt wrinkled, her hair sticking out in all directions.

The importance of appearances becomes more pronounced when we learn of Kojima’s beliefs regarding her bullying. Shortly after the duo’s visit to the museum, she explains that she only looks the way she does because she wants to feel closer to her father, a working-class man her mother divorced before remarrying into money. Kojima calls her refusal to bathe and her dirty clothes her “signs,” and declares her suffering — hers and the narrator’s — to be a noble thing. This rebellion against codes of propriety would be laudable if it weren’t so misguided — or worse, an insulting cosplay of poverty. The fact that Kojima, unlike the narrator, has a choice about her appearance (it is worth noting that she only stopped bathing after she became rich) renders suspect her encouragement of the narrator’s acceptance of his brutalization. She tells the narrator that it’s right for the two of them to just “let it happen.” After a particularly harrowing scene involving a volleyball, Kojima even tells the narrator, whose head is bleeding, that “it’s almost like we chose this.”

Except, of course, the narrator doesn’t choose any of it, especially not in the way that Kojima chooses a deranged class solidarity. But Kojima is special to the narrator, the only person in school he’s close to, the only girl who has ever told him that she liked his eyes. When the narrator finds out about a surgery that could fix his strabismus, it causes a rift between him and Kojima, who has by then intensified her facade of poverty by starving herself. To Kojima, the invitation to suffer is a calling, a special cause, one that her unenlightened classmates couldn’t possibly understand, one that only she and the narrator could ever really see. It’s telling that she calls her behavior her “signs,” as if she were a saint marked by stigmata.

In contrast to Kojima’s embrace of existential suffering is the nihilism advocated by Momose during a chance encounter, when he declares that the narrator’s feelings mean nothing to him. In fact, everything is meaningless: the strong always brutalize the weak, morality is a sham, everyone does what they can get away with. Momose tells the narrator that he gets bullied because he lets it happen, preposterously proposing that his lazy eye has nothing to do with it, and even dares the narrator to hurt him and Ninomiya the next time they bully him. Of course, Momose can afford to philosophize about the narrator’s predicament: after all, he’s not on the receiving end of the casual torture and can thus afford to approach the situation as a mere thought exercise. The narrator feels trapped between two warring philosophies, unable either to martyr himself for Kojima’s cause or to stomp on his enemies as Momose dares him, and so finds himself sinking ever deeper into his own despair.

Heaven doesn’t lend itself to easy conclusions. Even its denouement feels fraught, as if we are betraying something in ourselves by going along with it. In a novel where violent pressures force the narrator to change, our acquiescence feels like giving up on our own capacity to rebel, to doubt our ability to escape an unfair fate. Kawakami never lets us settle comfortably, which is a testament to her storytelling power. Long after finishing the novel, I find myself recalling its harrowing details and troubling contradictions.

The harrowing descriptions of bullying and the indifference of the adults around these youngsters made this quite a difficult read at times, but it was beautifully handled, never gratuitous descriptions of violence. The brutal scenes were interspersed with much more lyrical, awkwardly recognisable scenes of adolescent friendship and burgeoning love, with earnest conversations about good and bad, about human relationships and power imbalances. A painful yet also beautiful book.

A brutal piece of work that deserves for a trigger warning for the graphic descriptions of bullying that the two protagonists have to endure though you may not. The quality of the writing and the fleshing out of the characters are impeccable and make a lasting impression, though there are a few sections that are a little slow and difficult to get through.

The narrator of this story is a nameless teenage boy who becomes friends with Kojima, a girl from his class. They initially bond over their shared experiences of being endlessly bullied by some of their classmates (due to his lazy eye and her bad financial situation). The two constantly exchange letters and spend time in each other’s company, strengthening their friendship over time.

There is not much to this novel (as it usually is with Japanese literature) but it is a beautifully written piece of work. The narrator spends a lot of time talking and thinking about different philosophical themes (such as the purpose of life, empathy, self-empowerment, finding meaning, and making our own decisions) through conversations with Kojima and and other characters. Kawakami has an exceptional ability to craft counter-arguments within all of her dialogue without particularly taking either side and allowing the reader to make of them what they will. I personally found it a little frustrating in the context of this novel but it is a highlight of Kawakami’s works. Overall, “Heaven” is a short but strong novel that explores the concepts of power and meaning, with an emotional resonance that far exceeds how many pages it contains.

A couple of years ago, I read and really enjoyed Mieko Kawakami's Ms Ice Sandwich. It was quirky and had that certain je ne sais quoi that I love about Japanese novels. So, I was excited when I got a copy of her earlier novel Heaven. Heaven was originally published in Japanese in 2009 but only very recently has been published in English. This story is darker than Ms. Ice Sandwich and follows a young school boy as he is bullied by his peers. This 14 year old boy has a lazy eye and is called "Eyes" by his classmates and non-stop teased and abused by them, seemingly unnoticed by the school staff and parents. Through a series of notes and private meet ups, he develops a connection with a female classmate who is also heavily bullied. Together the two of them have some philosophical discussions about life and WHY they are being bullied. In the course of the book, the protagonist also has similar discussions with other characters with differing perspectives on the WHY.

Ooooof. This was a powerful read. I am giving it between 4 and 4.5 stars. It was hard to read some of the bullying scenes but they were balanced out by the deeper discussions of the characters. You can't help but feel for these kids who are so targeted by their peers. You just want things to be better for them. Kawakami has an extraordinary skill for writing very empathetic young characters. They draw you into their emotions and pain. There are a lot of deeper passages between the characters about how people become ostracized by society and their peers and whether it is worth it to push back.

A harsh yet beautiful story of two outcasts learning to define themselves in a world of torment. The descriptions of bullying in this book are brutal and hard to stomach yet are some perfectly conjured that the reader is transported to the pain and peril it brings. Ultimately a novel of friendship and family and the incredible support bases they form around us if we can only gain the courage to ask for help.

I was somehow bored but also thoroughly disturbed by this book. Was there a meaning in there somewhere or did it just go over my head? I've never met nor do I ever expect to meet 14 year olds that philosophize to this extent using this language. The whole monologue by the bully sounded like a college bro who took one philosophy class and fancies himself enlightened. Very bizarre IMO. Loved Breasts and Eggs but Heaven was a big no.

Thanks to Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Heaven is a story about friendship forged in a desperate situation. It is told through a nameless narrator known as "Eyes" to his classmate because of his criss-crossed eyes. He ventures through his middle school years trying to avoid bullies at school, a popular but ruthless group who put him in dire and violent situations, sometimes even life threatening. 

He starts receiving little notes in his desk, asking him questions, and here is where the story takes off. 

"Eyes" finds the letters are written by a girl, Kojima, who sees them the same because of the suffering they have to endure. She sees hers as a badge of honor, believing that the suffering serves a bigger purpose. She even tells him that his eyes are beautiful, and for the first time, he feels seen. 

They develop friendship out of writing letters, and he begins to question for the first time, why this happens to him and Kojima. This internal dialogue, although a bit inconsistent with the age of the narrator, was fascinating. 

In doing more research, bullying in Japan and Korea have become such a huge issue. It is mainly due to the classroom management style of teachers singling out students, the cultural need to confirm, and the inability by the kids to report these incidents. 

This is my first @kawakami_mieko I've read, and I love how she brings to light issues that affect everyday people. Although they seem like very ordinary, their situations are not, which adds to the complexity of the story.

Where do I begin? I absolutely adore Kawakami’s writing, it’s just brilliant. I will read anything and everything she publishes! Her work is so dark and insightful. Definitely my kind of thing!

Getting back to Heaven — our unnamed protagonist is a 14 year old boy who is nicknamed Eyes simply because he has lazy eyes. One day, he receives a letter from his classmate Kojima, who’s been nicknamed “Hazmat” due to her poor clothes and smell. The two find solace in each other and share this secret friendship through their letters. However, at school they pretend not to know each other otherwise they’ll be bullied even more.

Honestly, some of the scenes were just heart wrenching and cruel. Kids can be so damn mean. Both Eyes and Kojima continue to get bullied — physically and emotionally simply because they are different. I’ve noticed in Japanese literature (and in Asian lit), if you’re different or you stand out — that makes you a target. If you don’t conform and follow the lifestyle that’s laid out to you then people think you’re weird.

This story focuses on why people get bullied vs why people bully. But sometimes there isn’t even a reason at all. In this case, the bullies were the rich and popular students, they were smart, good looking and kept on their teacher’s good sides. No one would ever believe they were shoving things down Eye’s throat or pushing Kojima around.

I truly loved the friendship between our protagonist and Kojima — how through all the terrible times they were able to talk to each other, share hobbies and secrets and just be friends. I think one of the worst parts about being bullied is how lonely you get. We find out the reasons they both chose not to say anything and how it differs from each other.

A lot of crazy and graphic things happen in this one, and the ending I don’t know what to make of it. A bit of a shock factor maybe? I did enjoy it but I didn’t love it, probably due to the lack of plot. Lots of unlikeable characters that I really did not care for — such as the bully’s backstory (and monologue), who I can’t even remember what their names are.

TW: Bullying, physical violence, sexual scenes, graphic descriptions of violence between teenagers.

Thank you Netgalley and Europa Editions for the arc!

Overall, I felt kinda meh about this book. Not necessarily bad, but not particularly memorable either. Giving it 3/5 Stars.

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami is a fiction novel following a teenage boy who is bullied relentlessly for his lazy eye. One day he discovers a note hidden in his desk and develops a friendship with the unknown writer. Soon the secret friend asks to meet and he realizes it is Kojima, a fellow classmate who is also harassed by the bullies. As the plot and the friendship develops, the book explores the meaning of friendship, the choices we make, and the meaning of life.

As with other translated Japanese novels, this book is a quiet book with direct prose. I love the atmosphere that is created with style as it allows me to focus on the themes which are strong in the novel. I loved how the author explores how we create meaning out of our circumstances to cope using things such as a religion or a personal philosophy. It was also interesting how the book touched on what is considered right vs wrong and who is hurt or benefits from these decisions.

This is a difficult novel yet it wasn’t egregious. The tone was serious yet the friendship between the two was so hopeful and I was rooting for both the characters. I think this book also showed the importance of family and keeping an open dialogue but understanding how hard it is for teens to discuss these issues. I loved the quiet ending that left me hopeful for how the narrator grew despite his awful experiences.

Many thanks to the publisher Europa Editions and Netgalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.