A review by clarkg
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

"The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store" is a beautiful, lyrical tale of community and solidarity. McBride has created a rich world full of brilliant, dynamic characters whose fates entwine in surprising places. I appreciated many things about this book--the language, the care given to crafting the story's Black and Jewish communities, the breadth and depth of disability representation (though not without flaw), and its callbacks to a larger conversation about the possibilities and limits of justice on stolen land. If I had to describe "The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store" in a single word, it would be "abundant".

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Chronic illness, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, Violence, Rape, Forced institutionalization, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual violence, Child abuse, Medical trauma, Ableism, Child death, Death, and Excrement

Moderate: Classism, Antisemitism, Colonisation, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Infertility, Death of parent, Mental illness, Misogyny, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Xenophobia

Minor: Slavery, Infidelity, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Alcohol, and Alcoholism