Reviews

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami

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sshelby222's review against another edition

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4.0

destroyed me

darlingreads's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

The story is written from a rather introspective point of view. We follow these two teenagers as they deal with feelings of otherness, isolation, the finding of a friendship among bullying, and what it means to be different.
This book reminded me why I love japanese literature and the way it showcases mundanity, as well as the reality of being human in a society that makes it impossible for people to be different and show up as their most authentic selves.
Kojima is a very fascinating character.

Unnamed protagonist and girl named Kojima are 14 year old classmates, both get bullied. He gets picked on because he has a lazy eye, while she is seen as dirty in poor.
The two first get in touch with each other when our main character starts receiving letters from a stranger, until one day he gets asked to meet up at a “secret spot”, and that is when he finds out the writer of those letters is kojima.
They start writing to each other and never talking at school. Just silently observing the other get severely bullied by their classmates.
Protagonist starts developing unprecedented feelings for kojima.
Mid story we find out kojima isn’t actually poor. Her parents are divorced and her dad has a precarious financial situation, while her mom married a rivh man. In order to “honor” her dad, whom she admires a lot, kojima starts wearing clothes that resemble her dad’s as well as washing herself less frequently to feel closer to him.
Breaking point of the friendship is when, after a very bad bullying episode, unnamed protagonist needs to go to the hospital to get his nose checked, after a 2nd or 3rd check-up a doctor brings up the possibility of a surgery for lazy eye. Protagonist had already had one when he was 5 and it wasn’t successful, but doctor reassures him that it is worth a second shot.
Upon finding out that he is interested in the procedure, Kojima, who has claimed at least twice that she loves protagonist’s eye and that it makes him special, finds herself in a very uncomfortable position: she goes on a rant about how he shouldn’t give in to others’ expectations of what he should look like. He should be proud of his uniqueness instead of seeing it as a weakness or something that makes him less of a human.

Main character contemplating suicide for the first time: “What is dying anyway? I let this impossible question fill the darkness of my bedroom. I thought about how somebody was always dying somewhere, at any given moment. This isn't a fable or a joke or an abstract idea. People are always dying. It's a perfect truth. No matter how we live our lives, we all die sooner or later. In which case, living is really just waiting to die. And if that's true, why bother living at all? Why was I even alive? I made myself crazy, tossing and turning, hyperventilating. Then it hit me: dying is just like sleeping. You only know you're sleeping when you wake up the next day, but if morning never comes, you sleep forever. That must be what death is like. When someone dies, they don't even know they're dead. Because they never see it happen, nobody ever really dies. This hit me like a sucker punch. At first, my desire to die was a desire to disappear. I wanted to erase myself and feel real peace. But if dying doesn't actually involve a moment where you die, could I really disappear? Wouldn't death basically mean wandering around forever, in something like a dream? It made me wonder: who could tell the difference between living in this world and living in a dream?”