... heady and elegant ... The Heavens is something of a chameleon, a strange and beautiful hybrid. Just when you think you’re standing on firm footing, the ground shifts ... Chief among the novel’s many accomplishments is the fluidity of this movement. The dual worlds and perspectives are convincingly distinct and granular, coaxed to life by Newman’s self-assured prose, which manages to be at once disciplined and sensuous ... The book is, blessedly, not about offering a diagnosis or unknotting the riddle of how Kate understands time; rather it is about illuminating the riddle itself. Revelations, often thrilling ones, abound... but no definitive answer is reached ... I woke from The Heavens as I hope to emerge from any work of fiction: moved and unsettled, a new and intoxicating set of questions alight on the mind’s horizon.
The novel is a fantastic representation of the alternate-reality/time-travel genre with reality changing every time Kate returns to the present. While many novels have explored 'The Butterfly Effect,' the subject is not always handled with such expertise ... There are times this novel is funny; alternatively, it’s terrifying, and there are passages that are absolutely heartbreaking ... The author’s language is captivating and lyrical. She paints with great skill Kate’s fluid reality of Manhattan, with its party-filled summers and snowstorm-stopped winters ... Author Newman has a strong ability to put us in the moment with her characters ... The Heavens blends elements of speculative, historical, and literary fiction with mastery. I enjoyed Newman’s humor, eccentric descriptions, and period dialogue.
... Newman’s sparky sensibility is given the grandest of backdrops ... It’s one heck of a pitch, and in the hands of any other writer could wind up gimmicky, but Newman’s genius lies in balancing these timelines and worlds so finely that the whole thing is seamless – not to mention lots of fun. The narrative darts around deftly and the bursts of archaic language are playful and tender ... Newman is a sharp observer of character, and Ben and Kate’s social circle of moneyed activists and radical artists is familiar but far from cliched ... When the Twin Towers came up I groaned inwardly, but then Newman did something so fresh and weird with the story that the tragedy was injected with new life and meaning. I also want to mention her heartbreaking use of parentheses. Who would have thought that a writer’s use of brackets could reduce a reader to tears?
