Book Review: The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears
The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears
UK title: Children of the Revolution
by Dinaw Mengestu
Riverhead, 2007
240 p., $22.95
This was one of the best novels I read all of last year. Hands down. Normally I'm a very plot driven reader, give me loads of action and people going places and thinking out issues and catching the bad guy... I'm all over it. But this, this was different.
Sepha Stephanos is an Ethiopian immigrant living the Logan Circle neighborhood of Washington DC (literally two blocks from where my library is). For the last 17 years he has run his own corner store, catering to the hookers and the johns who cruise the circle and the longtime residents of the run down homes surrounding the circle.
How did his life come to this? His job, barely scraping by, hardly making the money to pay the bills. His friends, only two other african immigrants in a city of a half a million. His family, thousands of miles away in Ethiopia and he never speaks to them. No relations, no life to speak of, no work to speak of. Bereft of meaning.
His descent into depression is slowed and changed by the arrival of Judith and Naomi. Judith, a white college professor on Sabaatical and Naomi her precocious daughter move into one of the houses on the circle. Their coming signals the beginning of the changes in the neighborhood, for better and for worse.
The focus of this book is on the life and emotions of Sepha, the shopkeeper. There is a deep sense of romance and beauty in him, coupled with this feeling of being stuck and alone. I really felt connected to this man, and wondered what was holding him back. Why could he not move forward? While that question never got answered, there were little moments of movement that made everything worthwhile.
The title comes from a line near the end of the Inferno. After Dante has climbed out from the lowest pit of Hell he looks up and sees glimpses of "the beautiful things that heaven bears." That vision is the driving force behind the book in my mind. Being at the lowest of the low in ones life and seeing all around oneself those things that make life and love and the soul all remarkable.
Apart from some editing mistakes (which someone [not me] had fixed in pen in my library copy) it was very well written and extremely evocative. The fact that I walk this neighborhood daily, and walk past these places all the time made me really feel deeply entrenched in this work. Though you wouldn't have to live here to know the feeling of gentrification as it happens.
Absolutely wonderful.
Overall Rating: A