Heaven is truly as bold as the reviews say it is.
When readers think of the archetypal Japanese book, a clear picture usually comes to mind. Works by Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, or perhaps Natsume Sōseki form the core of the Japanese literary tradition as perceived in the West. This book, as written by Kawakami, bucks the perception completely, pushing the boundaries of literary territory previously explored by authors before her: indeed making an important contribution to the vast canon of Japanese literature.
I’ll admit that at first (for the first two chapters or so) I didn’t find the book very compelling. For its part, the novel is translated in the Western young adult style. It’s very apparent, though, that this is nothing like the typical young adult novel, because there isn’t a single Western young adult author that would be brave enough to explore the themes Kawakami explores or to describe the events in the book in the same vivid detail.
These visceral depictions of violence and bullying are written with such extreme clarity and lucidity that it’s almost unsettling watching the scene play out in your mind. Everything on the stage is constructed with minute detail and everything that happens is done in a play-by-play that forces the reader to sit through what is akin to the torture of the narrator. The personal philosophies of individual characters clash with each other in an almost binary way, with the faceless violence of others contrasting these philosophies. The prose is deceptively simple for such a rich text - peel back the layers and the work is approachable from so many distinct lenses of analysis.
Many published reviews do this book more justice than I have written. I suggest reading the review by Merve Emre published in The New Yorker.
5/5
Written 24 May 2022 Adapted from my review on Goodreads.