A review by neilazaara
Heaven by Mieko Kawakami

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Let me start by saying that Mieko Kawakami is definitely an author I’ll be looking forward to read more of. 2 pages in and I have decided to add all of Mieko Kawakami translated work to my wishlist. The writing is just so compelling and engaging, no matter the story, I knew I would be intrigued! However, the story was way too graphic and violent to my liking. I had to put it down at times and look at some rainbows and puppies just to not feel like I want to jump off a bridge right that instant. 
This novel is too short and too long at the same time. It is hard to really give a rating or even criticise this book as it is dealing with very serious and important topics, such as bullying, suicide and self-harm. Instead of a critical analysis, I’ll give my thoughts and feelings on it, as I feel like this book will affect each reader in a very different way.

First, the writing style is beautiful. However, some graphic depiction of gruesome events were too descriptive and realistic. It made me physically repulsed and anxious, and I wanted to put the book down and never come back to it. The ugliness of human behaviour in this book is just too much to bear. 

Second, the characters were, to say the least, odd. They definitely painted a very interesting psychological portrait. An analysis of their psyche would be the most interesting part about reading this novel. However, there seemed to be a slight glorification of bullying and some kind of morality derived that can be seen through Kojima’s eyes which is deeply disturbing.
I could not really empathise with either of the bullied teenagers which might have been the author’s purpose. It seems like making the bullied infuriatingly powerless or actively demanding the bullying was supposed to make the reader almost start thinking like the bullies, which is definitely an uncomfortable thought. However, I was more annoyed by both the bullies and bullied, rather than reflecting on a deeper meaning and morality behind the act. 

The protagonists have very skewed and pseudo-philosophical internal monologues and the fact that they are in middle school makes it a bit unrealistic and mostly laughable. They try to explain and understand concepts present in philosophy such as Nietzsche’s work (e.g. beyond good and evil or slave morality). This is highly unlikely debate to be had by such young teens and it seemed like at time the novel tried to carry more meaning than it had. The whole philosophical debate of the unimportance of moral compass made me very uneasy, in particular with such a lack of further discussion in the later parts of the book. Maybe if there were more conversations between the protagonists, some kind of debate could occur, but the internal monologue of a 14 year-old boy was a bit too poor to carry enough meaning.

Overall, I cannot say I have enjoyed reading Heaven as it was the most vile and hellish depiction of human behaviour and thoughts, I’ve read in a long while. It is very crude and raw, overly graphic, and that make it seem longer than necessary, while the shortness of the book makes it feel as if there wasn’t enough space to fully open a debate. I have very mixed feelings about this book and although I can definitively say that this book is wonderfully written and is a great piece of literature, I can’t shake off the thought that I really did not enjoy reading it.
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