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)

I really enjoy Kawakami's writing and I'm looking forward to seeing more of her work being translated. This short novel about school bullying features strong writing, but also some tough to read passages concerning bullying

I truly never envisioned being so torn apart and equally brought back together by a short novella about bullying. Heaven is truly an eccentric gem of a book for anyone – especially those who have ever been bullied. The message Mieko portrays is that of a lonesome middle school boy with a lazy eye coming into his own and a message of hope for those struggling to understand and love themselves truly and wholly.

The story is told from the perspective of a 14-year-old boy who is ruthlessly bullied and is only understood by another female classmate who also has to deal with the same torment. Because of their friendship, certain events transpire that make him understand himself more fully – which ultimately culminates in him making a life decision that will change him indefinitely. Often times throughout the reading, I found myself distraught and angry with the central character as he refused to ever defend himself against his aggressors; instead allowing himself to be constantly abused and even shunned publicly. As you come to the novella’s finale, you come to understand it was all part of his authentic evolution.

If this was not a unique and utterly Japanese take on growth and self-love, I don’t know what is. Moreover, the writing itself is very poetic and illustrates perfect examples of how Japanese literature juxtaposes the beauty of nature and horror that humanity can be. With every line Ms. Kawakami writes, poetry seems to flow freely and earnestly. I can only imagine how much more beautiful these words are in its original Japanese text. This is definitely a must read and possibly already one of my favorites of the entire 2021 book releases.

One day at school, "Eyes" finds a letter in his desk, asking him to be friends. It's not signed. He has no idea whom it could be from, and deeply suspects it's a trick from the bullies who've been picking on him, because he has no friends and knows nobody could be interested in him.

"Heaven" is a graphically violent story about bullying in middle school. Some suspension of disbelief is necessary; not because the violence is too incredible to be believed (it's credible enough), nor because the students are too mature (teens can have deep thoughts), but because you get the occasional scene that defies belief, such as a character launching into a long and deep monologue about the psychology of people and bullies when he's asked to consider it for the first time.

That being said, it's an interesting story. "Eyes" has a lazy eye, which not only makes it harder for him to see properly, but also makes him bullied by Ninomiya, Momose and their group of friends. They make him do chores, humiliate him, and beat him, and Eyes lives in terror of them, but finds himself unable to do anything.

But Kojima, the other bullied student, a girl who's always a dirty and unkempt, decides they need to be friends and writes him a flurry of letters. After they meet in person, a friendship sparks up between them.

Kojima is an interesting character: imaginative and introspective, she confesses that her dirty appearance is a way to still feel connected to her poor father, whom her mother divorced and looks down upon. As the story progresses, she starts seeing their bullying from a philosophical point of view, and believes that she and Eyes are superior not just to their bullying peers, but to everyone else who stands by, doing nothing.

After Eyes takes a greater beating than usual, and has his nose broken, something changes in Kojima, and she gradually becomes more and more fervent in her beliefs that everything has meaning, while he doesn't know what to think, especially when faced with the opposing view that nothing has meaning and his being bullied is purely accidental.

The story is both about ideas and the deeper causes of bullying, and about the effects of constant aggression, with an odd and powerful ending.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

There me be a point burried somewhere deep within this book but its hidden in the sheer oddness of the prose.

What could have been a powerful story about bullying fell flatter than a deflated pancake. It's all quite pointless and has no read resolution.

The characters' personality was more wooden than Lincoln's cabin and pacing was painfully slow.

(My dudes the length is still a novella, there is no shame in it being shorter!) The publisher was kind enough to pass me an ARC, and I was extremely excited to read this, having recently finished Breast and Eggs. We get the point of view of a young boy being bullied in middle school, a pretty standard subject in Japanese literature, but Kawakami does an amazing job with the subject. Part of it is that we get our main character bonding with another bullied girl, and how their friendship plays out over the course of the novella. The ending is incredibly well done, and handles several things that could come off as exploitative incredibly well. They apparently have acquired another book from her, and I can’t wait to read the next one.

This is a novel that could very easily fall into the lure of the saccharine, the precocious narrator who is more logical and even-headed than the adults in the room, always pointing out what we fail to see through our all-encompassing Adultness (which makes idiots out of all). But it navigates the border between childish and adults things admirably. This is a painful subject, and I've never actually read a novel before about school bullying. The events seem so extreme reading it, but I have memories from childhood that make it definitively plausible. But the novel was lifted up by sharp, incisive characters whose labored efforts to find beauty in pain are riveting. The only character whose dialogue I had trouble with was the complicit Momose, but that was moreso his well-honed, overly-articulate nihilism than the words themselves. Still, I found his pronouncements had a discomforting simplicity. This novel challenged me to hone in on the intricacies at play in bullying, in being both the bully and the bullied. "Bullying" is a word that seems to have lost all effect today, a broad catchall term that simultaneously elicits our most carceral tendencies and stiff upper lip attitudes. Despite its violence, Heaven is gently unconventional in plot and philosophy. An introduction to Kawakami that has counted me as an instant fan.

TW: bullying, graphic violence, suicidal thoughts

This book follows a young boy with a lazy eye who gets bullied in school every day. Through letters, he forms a friendship with another victim of massive bullying.

Wow, this was a lot rougher than expected. In the beginning, HEAVEN was a bit reminiscient of MS ICE SANDWICH, but that feeling went away soon. Its place took a weird melancholic, sad, but also hopeful feeling that was utterly shattered as the bullying gets rougher and rougher--you'll definitely need a trigger warning--or three. Bur despite the circumstances, our two characters never lost hope and went through all of this. Kawakami's writing was beautiful as ever, even in depicting very graphic violence.

This book also deals with thoughts about why bad things always seem to happen to certain people and why bullies so often are able to get away with this.

My verdict: Keep your eyes peeled for this one if you can stomach above mentioned topics!

This book deals with a young boy that is bullied in school, and the hardships that it causes for him. But also the little pockets of happiness that he is able to find. In particular, the friendship that he develops with a girl in his class.

Like a lot of Japanese literature, this book had a tone of a disturbing, yet naive view of the world. I enjoyed the simple but thoughtful prose and the philosophical conversations of two middle-graders in Japan. But at times I also found that, even though this was written for adults, the age of the characters made me feel disconnected from the story.

If Breasts and Eggs is Mieko Kawakami's cult book, Heaven is definitely her masterpiece so far. In short, the plot tells us about this media boy, whose name we do not know, suffering from squint and about a girl, Kojima, his peer who decides to be dirty (we will find out later why) who are bullied every day by classmates. . The themes dealt with in this book are many, all interesting, all profound and even difficult to digest. Bullying, physical violence, friendship and its various levels and stages, the relationship with God, with the family, with the world, the sense of not belonging, suicide, loneliness, is there only one bully? Or is a bully also someone who watches and is silent? power, the dynamics between the strong and the weak and the facets of power that make up the identity of each of us. The book alternates truly violent moments with physically sweeter but emotionally destabilizing moments. The writing is strong, beautiful, dirty (there are various liquids that we will see flowing from the bodies of these kids) but also ethereal which at first may seem dissonant with the narrative but which in reality, we will see, works perfectly with the violence described with minutia. If I really liked the incipit of Breasts and Eggs (in my opinion one of the most beautiful in recent years) of Heaven, I loved the ending: beautiful and poignant and completely the opposite of what I would have expected. There is not a single flaw in this book. Putting it among the most beautiful of the year would be to minimize its content and its value, for me it is one of the most beautiful books ever and I recommend anyone, even the youngest (perhaps more high school students) to read it and even more than one time.
Read in ARC, made available from NetGalley and Europa Editions.

If it's possible to have an ethereal book about bullying, then this is it. Mieko Kawakami writes from the perspective of a boy with a lazy eye who is mercilessly bullied at the hands of his classmates. When he receives a note in his desk, he's suspicious at first, but it turns out to be a girl in his class, Kojima, who is similarly bullied. Thus begins an exchange of notes and a friendship that both need. It also serves as a vehicle for exploring deeper issues around power, weakness, strength, and finding meaning. If it seems profound for a book about bullied teens, that's because it is. The ethereal quality imbued in Kawakami's writing makes the experience of reading this book feel dissonant, and yet it works. Those who need a strong plot won't appreciate this book, but for those accustomed to a more Japanese style, this is a great read.

Heaven is thought-provoking read on many levels. The intense descriptions of the acts of bullying would likely make this an uncomfortable read for those who have themselves gone through such experiences, but these scenes are in no way gratuitous, being instead the starting point for a moral debate on violence in all its forms. The scenes of friendship between the two victims help to balance the narrative, offering some lighter moments amidst the general gloom, and the ending also adds to this glimmer of hope. This is a visceral work that poses a lot of deep and important questions, while also shining a light on bullying in schools. At just over 100 pages, it is also a fairly short read, though, and I got through it in about an hour and a half. Recommended for readers who enjoy darker, thoughtful fiction, but be aware there are some harrowing scenes.

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.

Read in ARC, made available from NetGalley and Europa Editions.

A chilling and amazing book about two Japanese students and their experiences being bullied at school. The perspectives offered felt unique and real to me and this seems like both a story and a guide to understanding the psychology of bullying in Japan. It reads smoothly and I was unable to put it down until I finished.
As is often the case with Japanese literature, the ending felt a little abrupt. This is not the kind of story that gets neatly tied up with a bow. Nor should it be. Highly recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book.