PositiveLos Angeles Review of BooksA highly interior novel, Heaven locks us in, maybe even traps us, in the viewpoint of its unnamed 14-year-old protagonist ... Kawakami really makes us feel his urge to look down, to make himself small, so as not to attract unwanted attention ... 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 ... The prose evolves throughout the novel, as if tracking the rising action ... 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.
