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nusta's review against another edition
challenging
dark
hopeful
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying, Physical abuse, and Sexual harassment
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts and Violence
itsq42's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
This was a difficult read in part because of the psyche of the character whose perspective we hear the story from and in part due to the actions of the other characters.
It’s definitely a really vivid capture of the experience of childhood bullying and the ways that impacts the brain but that comes with all the downsides of living in that world.
It’s definitely a really vivid capture of the experience of childhood bullying and the ways that impacts the brain but that comes with all the downsides of living in that world.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, and Sexual harassment
Moderate: Ableism and Body shaming
Minor: Confinement, Eating disorder, and Medical content
rainee_deverell's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
This is the first time I’ve read Mieko Kawakami’s work (translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd) and… wow. It’s been a while since I read prose and an experience of life that was so hauntingly brutal and at the same time realistically portrayed. The minimisation and cognitive dissonance experienced by the main character which allow him to speak about the experiences he has with such … distance is just so realistic. It was amazing to feel so reflected and seen by a book so different to me in so many different ways. I’m grateful for reading this book in a way I haven’t in a while, and I’m eager to read more of this author and the translation team’s work. Only reason for not giving it 5 stars is that, whilst i think the ending provided resolution for the character I wish it was less sudden. I wish we got to live with his relief in his “heaven” a little longer.
srbraddy's review against another edition
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
idk what to say wtf
oofym's review against another edition
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Really beautiful in the most melancholic way. The dialogue and questions surrounding topics like nihilism, finding meaning in suffering, living for yourself vs living for others; it was all put to paper in a manner that would make Dostoevsky proud.
This was Intricately crafted, poetic and deeply inquisitive towards how we find our own understanding of morality. I'm excited to read more of Kawakami's work.
This read like a Murakami book without the weird fetishisastion of women.
This was Intricately crafted, poetic and deeply inquisitive towards how we find our own understanding of morality. I'm excited to read more of Kawakami's work.
This read like a Murakami book without the weird fetishisastion of women.
ionaw26's review against another edition
2.0
don't get the hype
it started good but sorta fizzled out
it started good but sorta fizzled out
spenkevich's review against another edition
4.0
‘Because we’re always in pain, we know exactly what it means to hurt somebody else.’
In the past year I’ve really come to appreciate Mieko Kawakami. Heralded by [a:Haruki Murakami|3354|Haruki Murakami|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1615497402p2/3354.jpg], I eagerly dove in and have not been continuously astonished by her ouveur and literary punk-rock expressions of ideas. Heaven is the third novel translated to English by Japanese singer turned poet turned author Mieko Kawakami, who;s much praised—and deservedly so—Breasts and Eggs topped almost every Best Of list for 2020 (Heaven was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize), and is an extraordinary little novel that really highlights her major themes. Told from the perspective of a young boy who has faced heartbreaking and tragic levels of bullying, Kawakami delves into issues of trauma and how various ideologies on meaning in life address trauma. Deftly positioning the issues as a larger critique on society, ableism, and classism, Kawakami crafts a marvelously engaging book that is both heartbreaking and illuminating.
‘If we’re weak, our weakness has real meaning.’
Published in Japan in 2009 and just now translated into English by Sam Bett and David Boyd, Heaven predates both Ms Ice Sandwich and the completed two-part Breasts and Eggs (though not the original novella) and reads like a thematic Big Bang of her primary ideas. The story follows a brutally bullied young boy and his growing friendship with classmate, Kojima, who is also a primary target for abuse in the classroom. While the narrator comes across as weak and complaint to his violent detriment, Kojima is passive to abuse in a different way. With a voice that ‘reminds me of a 6B (pencil),’ he says to her in a letter, ‘soft and rigid at the same time., Kojima is a bit of an icon of ascetic resistance icon who believes their suffering has a deeper meaning of real strength and that they are an avenue to teach their bullies a lesson.
Through the emotional journey that explores the perils of a relationship forged on shared suffering, Kawami demonstrates one of her most impressive literary attributes: creating heartrending juvenile characters that read as so lifelike and empathetic you want to give them a hug. Such as Midoriko in B&E or the narrator in Ms Ice Sandwich, Kawakami truly shines when examining youthful emotions in a way that would make her novels a perfect crossover for YA readers.
‘My eye was behind all my problems.’
Kojimo has an interesting philosophy on bullying and the reasons behind it. ‘It’s a painful thing, I know’ she says to the narrator over his eye, which is a frequent impetus for teasing, ‘but it’s also made you who you are.’ Their signs, as she calls them, that makes them targets, are also what defines them, according to her, due to how it regulates them in the social hierarchy. There is a conversation where the narrator wishes he could be like a regular object the bullies ignore, but Kojima cuts him off to say ‘that’s what we are to them.’ They are objects of torture objectified by their aberations, he for his eye and she for appearing dirty and poor (‘you can look as good as anyone else,’ Kojima points out, ‘it doesn’t even matter if you’re poor,’ which is one of the many doorways into class conflict discourse this novel examines).
The way a person can become an Other in society is analyzed in the broader scheme of her works, but also how this happens by being objectified. Physical traits aren’t a valid indication of a person, but it becomes such a large part of the way people choose to see us and value us. Breasts and Eggs scrutinizes how use value in labor is contingent on physical attributes, such as Makiko undergoing breast enhancement surgery despite a large price barrier for the purpose of making her more profitable as a bar employee. Similar to the eye issue in Heaven is the titular character of Ms Ice Sandwich, who underwent facial surgery in hopes of better job placement due to physical beauty (patriarchal gaze abound) but a botched surgery left her with giant eyes that make her an outcast and target for scorn. The use of eyes for this social investigation is brilliant, as eyes are the way we perceive the world around us and are ironically the attribute that is being perceived as demeaning these characters into Otherness.
‘We all see the world in our own way,’ Kojima writes, and sometimes these perspectives on life are uncomfortable and conflicting. On one hand, we have Kojima and her belief in meaning and that there is a moral reward for doing the right thing, like theres a purpose that ‘understands the meaning of everything we’ve been through when it’s all over.’ For her, someone who allows herself to suffer and continues to present herself in a way that draws scorn, is a right of passage and moral message to the world where everyone else is complicit—especially by inaction to countering the worst abusers and thereby enabling much like [a:Hannah Arendt|12806|Hannah Arendt|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1608634661p2/12806.jpg]’s theory of the ‘Banality of Evil’—and therefor she is there to teach them.
This belief, which also views people as victims to normalcy and an oppressive social system they are being used within, is countered by one of the bullies. ‘There’s no beautiful world where everyone things the same way and they all understand each other,’ Momose, the near emotionless and potentially sociopathic (or, for literary purposes, the watcher figure of the novel) bully character asserts.
His ideology is in direct contrast with Kojima’s belief that their suffering and martyrdom has meaning, claiming ‘none of this has any meaning. Everyone just does what they want...nothing is good or bad.’ and people just do whatever is possible. Harming others isn’t about their eyes or poorness, he claims, but simply because they are beneath them and able to be hurt.
'Listen, if there's a hell, we're in it. And if there's a heaven, we're already there...I think that's fucking great.'
Something Kawakami does exceptionally well is create countering arguments without particularly siding with either, letting the novels play out within their frameworks and allowing the reader to make do of them as they will. It’s one of the aspects I enjoy most about her. These differing ideologies function as a nebulous duality to perspectives on life that we see come to play in structures of power and politics all the time. They also present ideas on the meaning of life. Kojima sees suffering as something that will be rewarded later in a very religious sort of sense. Her vision of heaven is personified in a painting she takes the narrator to see, one that shows two people in a basic room together.
This idea of heaven in the mundane encaptulates her existence and the painting is highly symbolic and something we have to take from her on faith, being only symbolic in a sense like in Woolf's [b:To the Lighthouse|59716|To the Lighthouse|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1639106809l/59716._SY75_.jpg|1323448] as we never actually see the painting. Momose, however, does not see meaning or purpose in anything, so everything is thereby permissable and consquences are only for those who let someone get the better of them. They can enforce rules onto others, but don't truly believe rules apply.
The narrator in the novel is a passive vessel to hear these opposing notions on life and try to process them within himself, unsure if it can ever be an either/or situation. Is his eye the cause of who he is, or does his eye not even matter and he is bullied simply for being a weaker figure as Momose insists. While he grapples, there is also the mother figure of the novel who simply balks at everything. Honestly, she is my favorite and such a relatable character always looking at the world and saying ‘that was weird, right?’ This is a whole mood and one I know well. She also figures into Kawakami’s theme of the complexities of familial relations and non-traditional family structures that always resonates like a punk rebellion against what she shows as an image-based society.
'Everything was beautiful. Not that there was anyone to share it with, anyone to tell. Just the beauty.'
Heaven is a brief yet hard-hitting novel that examines meaning and power in a really enthralling manner. The finale is shocking and really drives home her message of resistance and rebellion in a way that feels like a rebuke of [a:Haruki Murakami|3354|Haruki Murakami|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1615497402p2/3354.jpg]’s compliant, young female characters with the surreal and devastating climax. Her prose is simple yet serene, with complex imagery that is sure to enrapture the reader and colors each scene in pitch perfect emotional context. This is a powerful and heart wrenching little book with an emotional resonance far exceeding it’s page count and I am eager to read everything and anything this incredible author has to offer.
4.5/5
‘We do it for everyone who’s weak everywhere, in the name of actual strength. Everything we take, all of the abuse, we do it to rise above. We do it for the people who know how important it is.’
In the past year I’ve really come to appreciate Mieko Kawakami. Heralded by [a:Haruki Murakami|3354|Haruki Murakami|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1615497402p2/3354.jpg], I eagerly dove in and have not been continuously astonished by her ouveur and literary punk-rock expressions of ideas. Heaven is the third novel translated to English by Japanese singer turned poet turned author Mieko Kawakami, who;s much praised—and deservedly so—Breasts and Eggs topped almost every Best Of list for 2020 (Heaven was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize), and is an extraordinary little novel that really highlights her major themes. Told from the perspective of a young boy who has faced heartbreaking and tragic levels of bullying, Kawakami delves into issues of trauma and how various ideologies on meaning in life address trauma. Deftly positioning the issues as a larger critique on society, ableism, and classism, Kawakami crafts a marvelously engaging book that is both heartbreaking and illuminating.
‘If we’re weak, our weakness has real meaning.’
Published in Japan in 2009 and just now translated into English by Sam Bett and David Boyd, Heaven predates both Ms Ice Sandwich and the completed two-part Breasts and Eggs (though not the original novella) and reads like a thematic Big Bang of her primary ideas. The story follows a brutally bullied young boy and his growing friendship with classmate, Kojima, who is also a primary target for abuse in the classroom. While the narrator comes across as weak and complaint to his violent detriment, Kojima is passive to abuse in a different way. With a voice that ‘reminds me of a 6B (pencil),’ he says to her in a letter, ‘soft and rigid at the same time., Kojima is a bit of an icon of ascetic resistance icon who believes their suffering has a deeper meaning of real strength and that they are an avenue to teach their bullies a lesson.
Through the emotional journey that explores the perils of a relationship forged on shared suffering, Kawami demonstrates one of her most impressive literary attributes: creating heartrending juvenile characters that read as so lifelike and empathetic you want to give them a hug. Such as Midoriko in B&E or the narrator in Ms Ice Sandwich, Kawakami truly shines when examining youthful emotions in a way that would make her novels a perfect crossover for YA readers.
‘My eye was behind all my problems.’
Kojimo has an interesting philosophy on bullying and the reasons behind it. ‘It’s a painful thing, I know’ she says to the narrator over his eye, which is a frequent impetus for teasing, ‘but it’s also made you who you are.’ Their signs, as she calls them, that makes them targets, are also what defines them, according to her, due to how it regulates them in the social hierarchy. There is a conversation where the narrator wishes he could be like a regular object the bullies ignore, but Kojima cuts him off to say ‘that’s what we are to them.’ They are objects of torture objectified by their aberations, he for his eye and she for appearing dirty and poor (‘you can look as good as anyone else,’ Kojima points out, ‘it doesn’t even matter if you’re poor,’ which is one of the many doorways into class conflict discourse this novel examines).
The way a person can become an Other in society is analyzed in the broader scheme of her works, but also how this happens by being objectified. Physical traits aren’t a valid indication of a person, but it becomes such a large part of the way people choose to see us and value us. Breasts and Eggs scrutinizes how use value in labor is contingent on physical attributes, such as Makiko undergoing breast enhancement surgery despite a large price barrier for the purpose of making her more profitable as a bar employee. Similar to the eye issue in Heaven is the titular character of Ms Ice Sandwich, who underwent facial surgery in hopes of better job placement due to physical beauty (patriarchal gaze abound) but a botched surgery left her with giant eyes that make her an outcast and target for scorn. The use of eyes for this social investigation is brilliant, as eyes are the way we perceive the world around us and are ironically the attribute that is being perceived as demeaning these characters into Otherness.
‘We all see the world in our own way,’ Kojima writes, and sometimes these perspectives on life are uncomfortable and conflicting. On one hand, we have Kojima and her belief in meaning and that there is a moral reward for doing the right thing, like theres a purpose that ‘understands the meaning of everything we’ve been through when it’s all over.’ For her, someone who allows herself to suffer and continues to present herself in a way that draws scorn, is a right of passage and moral message to the world where everyone else is complicit—especially by inaction to countering the worst abusers and thereby enabling much like [a:Hannah Arendt|12806|Hannah Arendt|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1608634661p2/12806.jpg]’s theory of the ‘Banality of Evil’—and therefor she is there to teach them.
’They aren’t even thinking. Not at all. They’re just doing what they’ve seen other people do, following blindly. They don’t know what it means, or why they’re doing it….they’re never stopped to think about other people’s pain. They’re just following along, doing what everyone else does.’
This belief, which also views people as victims to normalcy and an oppressive social system they are being used within, is countered by one of the bullies. ‘There’s no beautiful world where everyone things the same way and they all understand each other,’ Momose, the near emotionless and potentially sociopathic (or, for literary purposes, the watcher figure of the novel) bully character asserts.
’Does anything in the world happen for a reason? Pretty sure the answer’s no. Yeah, once it’s happened, you can come up with all kinds of explanations that look like they make perfect sense. But everything starts from nothing. Always.’
His ideology is in direct contrast with Kojima’s belief that their suffering and martyrdom has meaning, claiming ‘none of this has any meaning. Everyone just does what they want...nothing is good or bad.’ and people just do whatever is possible. Harming others isn’t about their eyes or poorness, he claims, but simply because they are beneath them and able to be hurt.
'Listen, if there's a hell, we're in it. And if there's a heaven, we're already there...I think that's fucking great.'
Something Kawakami does exceptionally well is create countering arguments without particularly siding with either, letting the novels play out within their frameworks and allowing the reader to make do of them as they will. It’s one of the aspects I enjoy most about her. These differing ideologies function as a nebulous duality to perspectives on life that we see come to play in structures of power and politics all the time. They also present ideas on the meaning of life. Kojima sees suffering as something that will be rewarded later in a very religious sort of sense. Her vision of heaven is personified in a painting she takes the narrator to see, one that shows two people in a basic room together.
'After everything, after all the pain, they made it here. It looks like a normal room, but it's really heaven.'
This idea of heaven in the mundane encaptulates her existence and the painting is highly symbolic and something we have to take from her on faith, being only symbolic in a sense like in Woolf's [b:To the Lighthouse|59716|To the Lighthouse|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1639106809l/59716._SY75_.jpg|1323448] as we never actually see the painting. Momose, however, does not see meaning or purpose in anything, so everything is thereby permissable and consquences are only for those who let someone get the better of them. They can enforce rules onto others, but don't truly believe rules apply.
The narrator in the novel is a passive vessel to hear these opposing notions on life and try to process them within himself, unsure if it can ever be an either/or situation. Is his eye the cause of who he is, or does his eye not even matter and he is bullied simply for being a weaker figure as Momose insists. While he grapples, there is also the mother figure of the novel who simply balks at everything. Honestly, she is my favorite and such a relatable character always looking at the world and saying ‘that was weird, right?’ This is a whole mood and one I know well. She also figures into Kawakami’s theme of the complexities of familial relations and non-traditional family structures that always resonates like a punk rebellion against what she shows as an image-based society.
'Everything was beautiful. Not that there was anyone to share it with, anyone to tell. Just the beauty.'
Heaven is a brief yet hard-hitting novel that examines meaning and power in a really enthralling manner. The finale is shocking and really drives home her message of resistance and rebellion in a way that feels like a rebuke of [a:Haruki Murakami|3354|Haruki Murakami|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1615497402p2/3354.jpg]’s compliant, young female characters with the surreal and devastating climax. Her prose is simple yet serene, with complex imagery that is sure to enrapture the reader and colors each scene in pitch perfect emotional context. This is a powerful and heart wrenching little book with an emotional resonance far exceeding it’s page count and I am eager to read everything and anything this incredible author has to offer.
4.5/5
‘We do it for everyone who’s weak everywhere, in the name of actual strength. Everything we take, all of the abuse, we do it to rise above. We do it for the people who know how important it is.’