Heaven has become my favourite book of all time, closely followed by "All the Lovers in the night" by Mieko Kawakami herself as well.
Short but gut punching, it will make you think about life and with each note and encounter it will fill your heart with happamine.

This was a very hard-hitting, impactful book and hard to read at times. The dialogue between the two kids was both heartbreaking and heart wrenching. Thanks to Netgalley for an advance copy of the book.

[I wasn't able to read the corrupted PDF proof but finally managed to get hold of a different copy of this novel.]

Heaven, the third of Mieko Kawakami's novels to be translated into English, is told from the perspective of a teenage boy who is being subjected to relentless bullying at school; through his friendship with a girl who is also being bullied, he starts to build a different kind of philosophy for living that resists the amoral, nihilistic worldview of the gang. I liked a lot of the ideas in this novel, especially the different 'mission statements' put forward by the victims and the perpetrators, but I didn't quite find it convincing as fiction. It was ultimately too clunky and schematic, and never attained the transcendent weirdness of a writer like Sayaka Murata that might have allowed it to rise above these problems. Still worth reading, but Kawakami's Breasts and Eggs is the better novel. 3.5 stars.

A dark and profound novel about the true face of human nature, the bullying was raw and hard to read at times but so well written.

'I never had another friend like her. She was the only one.'

A powerful, sometimes disturbing and uncomfortable novel, this is a stunning exploration of teenage cruelty and violence. Our central character is never named, which in itself is a bold thing for Kawakami to do - is he meant to stand as a universal figure for everyone who has suffered at the hands of bullies? The reason that he is picked on is his lazy eye, which gives him not only a limited view of the world but also marks him as 'different'. The only person who gets him is the equally-bullied Kojima, and together they forge a secret friendship which gives them some escape from the cruelty of their lives at school.

'Eyes', as he is nicknamed at school, is adopted, and the wider themes of friendship, family and belonging are equally important to the the book. One of the final scenes, where our narrator and Kojima are taunted by their bullies, is an unflinching and drawn-out horror show which, uncomfortable as it is to read, is such a powerful piece of writing.

This is a profound and important book, beautifully crafted by Kawakami and expertly translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd. It is also an important book, and deserves to be read. 5 stars.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

An exquisite novel from a genius writer. Her talent is unquestionable when it comes to making a scene almost stepping out from the pages. She is able to make your skin hurt how vividly she can paint a character to been hurt and it really makes you reflect on a lot of things that happen in the world.
Definitely will pick up other books as well from Kawakami after this!

Heaven is a short little translated fiction read, though it took me some time to digest it completely, due to the troubling bullying faced by our two main characters. I did really enjoy seeing the relationship bloom and grow between the two, though I couldn’t help get myself frustrated on how they dealt with their bullies.

Sadly, I didn’t completely love this book as much as some that I’ve seen on bookstagram, and struggled through the scenes of severe bullying. Though I definitely think it’s worth picking up if you’re a fan of translated fiction.

Thank you so much @picadorbooks @picador via @netgalley for my digital review copy

This was a difficult read. The story is about bullying and Kawakami does such a good job covering the topic, especially given how this specific form of violence and intimidation is so delicate and versatile and often undefinable. ⁠
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Heaven's protagonist is a teenage boy who gets bullied because of his lazy eye. He suffers silently, taking every provocation and attack as a given until he makes friends with a girl from his class who is also a victim due to her unkempt appearance, which she stubbornly continues to maintain. Their ensuing friendship offers them both a lot of consolation, but is it enough to withstand the violence?

Kawakami writes about the acts of inflicting physical and emotional harm unflinchingly and reading about it from the perspective of the sufferer makes for a disturbing experience. There's definitely a Japanese vibe to the story and the atmosphere: grim, direct, and emotionally deep.

There's quite a depth to the story, as Kawakami attempts to deconstruct the meaning of bullying: a worthwhile exploration.

This was my first book by Kawakami, and I'm now even more eager to read Breasts and Eggs!

Thanks to Picador and NetGalley for my digital advanced readers copy.

I requested to read Heaven because I liked this author’s other book (Breasts and Eggs), although having learned more about its origins, I believe it would have worked better in its original iteration as a novella. Heaven itself is essentially a novella, and I read it in only a couple of sittings. Overall, I found it to be superior to Breasts and Eggs, and not only because it short and incisive with not a word wasted. I like Kawakami’s sparse writing style and in my opinion it works better with this kind of plot line than in Breasts and Eggs. The bullying scenes are often genuinely horrific and might require a trigger warning if a reader has personal experience of bullying. I certainly took both protagonists to my heart and was rooting for them both throughout.

Mieko Kawakami’s Heaven has been translated from Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd, who also translated Breasts and Eggs (published in English last year). Though much shorter, the best of the prose of Breasts and Eggs is present here: an attention to detail that pulses, a directness somehow both soft and sharp, sadness fraying round the edges. Heaven is the story of an unnamed teenage boy who is bullied for his lazy eye ¬– although this is as much of an excuse as anything. You get the sense early on that the bullying itself is the reason, that his eyesight is simply fulfilling the social need for a victim. By the time we meet him, the narrator isn’t surprised by his treatment anymore, if he ever was. His fear is caked in resignation. A very early scene is terrifying in its stoicism as the boy imagines being force-fed animal faeces with the sort of sincerity that suggests this is not an unthinkable situation: ‘whoever called me here might force me to eat them. The back of my throat burned. I emptied my lungs, in an attempt to make the taste of the crap go away, but the thought alone made me sick.’ (There are similarly graphic descriptions of physical bullying throughout.)

The main plot concerns the narrator’s friendship with another victim, Kojima. She initiates it with an unsigned note in his pencil case: ‘we should be friends’. He assumes, of course, that it is a joke, but eventually they start exchanging letters and strike up an understanding. ‘We only ever wrote about unimportant things’, he says, not wanting to acknowledge the way that sometimes saying nothing can feel like saying everything.

Outlining the facts of the torture isn’t really the point, though: Heaven is a philosophical exercise in examining the responsibilities we have towards other people. The characters have different views on it: the narrator is mostly passive when it comes to what happens to him, although he can’t explain why. He imagines fighting back but knows without knowing why that he won’t. The one bully he confronts about the situation is bemused. Kojima, however, believes their mutual suffering serves a purpose: ‘when it’s all over, we’ll reach a place, somewhere or something we could never reach without having gone through everything we’ve gone through.’ The narrator is less sure, marked by something he imagines will always make him a target and unable to imagine otherwise. After a particularly vicious attack, Kojima asks him: ‘do you think we’re practice? ... or are we the real thing?’ ‘Probably both’, he thinks.

That space between practice and reality, between pain having meaning and meaning nothing at all, is where this unflinching novel takes place. Heaven examines the situation with an intensity and consideration that can start to feel airless, or a lot like fatalism. Is there an escape? Is there some greater meaning? Or is it all practice for something we might never fully understand? Probably both.

Heaven is the story of a young boy in school in Japan who is being severely bullied by his classmates. He suffers from a lazy eye and is given the horrible nickname of 'Eyes' by his peers. He soon strikes up a friendship with another classmate Kojima, a girl who is also being severely bullied by the people in her class. What follows this is an emotional telling of their story with the two feeling that the root and cause of their bullying to be very different in meaning.

Kawakami writes this story brilliantly, and I really felt everything for the two characters. She crafted this beautiful friendship in their sadness and wrote it wonderfully. There was a deep darkness in this story. It wasn't just about the heaviness of being bullied, but also the hollow bullies and their lack of care. It's about human relationships, judgement and pain.

It was so clever, and so terrible to read, but in the best way. It isn't often a book makes you think and feel things, but this book does. For me, a book should make you feel things, and all my favourite ones do. This isn't a new favourite book, but I will definitely be checking out more from this author in the future. Her writing is both beautiful and powerful and I think she probably will write a new favourite, or has, and I just haven't read it yet.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and the publishers for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this beautiful novel. So funny and moving, yet with a heart as big and tender as anyone's, it was a joy to read and I couldn't put it down.

Heaven - Mieko Kawakami translated by David Boyd

‘Because we’re always in pain, we know exactly what it means to hurt somebody else.’

This story follows a 14 year-old boy nicknamed ‘eyes’ by his abusers; the reader is thrown into the miserable life this boy has to face due to his middle school bullies who are relentless in their tormenting. Another classmate, Kojima, suffers the same daily abuse and reaches out to Eyes by leaving notes in his school desk. This is where a relationship blooms between the two ‘outcasts’; with painfully true and gruesome similarities between the experiences they both are subjected to, they become friends.

This book has left my emotions on the edge, it was truly heartbreaking reading the details of abuse these teenagers were put through. There is a sense of ‘other’ throughout as the question of ‘why?’ is a recurring theme, the two students are in agreement of understanding why they’re picked on - it’s because they’re ‘different’ - but when one of the bullies is confronted by Eyes he simply disregards the notion that they bully due to his looks and rather because they want to.

With many philosophical and greater meanings this book poses many questions to the reader. A beautiful piece of writing by Kawakami, who has yet again caused my brain to whirl. I gave this title a 3* on Goodreads, however I have slept on it an upped it to a 4* - It’s definitely a piece of fiction that hits you after you have read it.

I was reading this during my break and had to take extra time off to finish it - it's the kind of book that enthralls you. It originally reminded me of Sayaka Murata but unlike her main characters...ours didn't really want to step away from society. His alienation is circumstantial and breaks my heart, but at the same time he is aching for connection. It's a book about lonely people reaching for each other.

His mum, him, Kojima. Each of them finding different ways to shoulder their private sufferings and make sense of the world.

The bullying scenes are brutal and I could hardly hold my breath, but the book's final message is one of hope - in a bittersweet way. Between thinking everything has a meaning and nothing does, there is life. Maybe nothing matters and everything does, but while the other characters in the book are lost in the search our narrator eventually starts living and finds that in all the ugly sometimes there are moments of beauty, and he can just enjoy that.

I will definitely recommend it and I've already ordered several copies for a display.

**Happy publication day to this new translation of Heaven by acclaimed Japenese author Mieko Kawakami! Many thanks to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for sending me a digital review copy.**


Our unnamed, 14 year old narrator is being mercilessly bullied and viciously tormented by his class mates. When Kojima, a fellow victim of these bullies, reaches out through a series of secret notes, a friendship blossoms. They both experience pain and suffering. They both know isolation and loss. But they also share an understanding that their suffering has shaped them and given them something exceptional, something their classmates will never possess. In that private knowledge they are both, at least partially, freed.

Although they come to find a much needed peace in each others company, the novel follows the friendship's struggle to stay pure in the soffucating toxicity of their school lives. Philosophy and morality burst to the surface of the novel as the persecution and violence against the two friends escalates. Kawakami questions human nature and the position of despondency, hope and the desperate search for meaning in meaninglessness shifts and collapses continually in a troublingly accurate depiction of the insecure adolescent mind. This narrative instability, in addition to the graphic descriptions of physical bullying, makes for an emotionally fatiguing and often distressing read.

Despite its challenging content, Heaven is a beautifully crafted work. I'm conscious of making the obvious comparison to Murakami but Kawakami's understated narrative, its stark realism sparingly punctuated by descriptive moments of such transcendent beauty, evoked the memory of my bewildered adolescent self reading Sputnik Sweetheart and being completely entranced. Moments of Kawakami's prose seem to lift from the page and hover, stretching time to shimmer before you.

What a gift she posses to craft sentences capable of pausing the universe (and phenomenal work from the translators to so flawlessly capture it). I'm so glad her work is now being widely translated for global readers to discover. I'll definitely be reading her other novels soon.

**Review to be published on Instagram WC 14/06**

Heaven is a beautiful but devastatingly brutal novel about adolescence, isolation and distance and a touching depiction of a childhood marked by bullying and exclusion. It follows an unnamed 14-year-old boy who lives a lonely life with his stepmother - his father stands out mainly because of his absence. He is nicknamed Eyes by the cruel and relentless bullies at his school, presumably as his eyes are misaligned. But not only does he endure verbal namecalling he suffers through horrific physical abuse too. The behaviour of the classmates who partake in it on the daily escalates and this leads to him being force-fed chalk, a goldfish and scraps of food from a rabbit’s cage. He is made to ingest pond and toilet water, is shoved inside a dark locker and is kicked, slapped and punched repeatedly. He's at the stage that he's resigned himself to this fate believing he can do nothing about it and often hints at wanting to ”disappear”. Instead of fighting back, he gives up and suffers in silence. One day he finds an anonymousnmessage in his pencil case: "We are of the same kind." Other messages follow; suddenly there is someone who asks him what his favourite colour is, what his favourite food is, and who comments on the weather. It soon turns out that the messages come from the only one who understands what he is going through: from his classmate Kojima, who is being bullied herself.

From then on, the two met regularly, always secretly, in the hope of avoiding further attention. They find solace in each other's company, but their friendship does not go unnoticed by their tormentors. This is a compelling, captivating and utterly heart-wrenching novel and despite its brevity, it manages to pack a real punch in the lives it depicts and the feelings it evokes. The characters burst to life and are not simply caricatures; they are some of the most authentic, genuine characters I've come across of late as evidenced by my deep concern and worry for both Eyes and Kojima throughout. I even shed a few tears. This is certainly not for the faint-hearted. Once again, Mieko Kawakami undertakes a literary tour de force; I was riveted from the outset and despite the cruelty depicted, beauty is still found throughout the narrative. Relentless, precise and full of empathy, she tells the story of two young people who are different, in a society that cannot stand being different, and thus once again proves her ability. It is a powerful, gut-punch of a novel on the question of identity and the relationship of oneself to the outside world. The narrative explores themes of great richness carried here by Japanese values which strongly displace Western intellectual interpretation. For those interested in exceptional storytelling with touches of Japanese culture, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Met and exceeded all of my expectations. Mieko Kawakami is a genius. An empathetic genius. Hope there is more where that and Breasts and Eggs came from.

I was a big fan of Kawakami after reading Breasts and Eggs and I went into this with high expectations, and I actually think she exceeded my expectations.
Whilst I loved Breasts and Eggs I thought sometimes the prose felt a bit disjointed, however in the case of Heaven the story flowed so well. I read this in one sitting, I couldn't bear to not finish it once I started. Kawakami has this amazing ability to portray such deep feeling and emotion without actually using emotional language. Almost the opposite in fact. Her style of writing is so matter-of-fact it's quite amazing how deep she can portray such a story of pain and suffering. The daily lives of the two main characters and the images of the final scene with the two surrounded by their bullies will stay with me for a long time. It was a harrowing story and it was unsettling in how it ended, not quite a happy ending but perhaps with a hint of normalcy.
It would actually seem like normalcy is all our protagonists want. The sheer fact that Kojima refers to the painting of a couple eating cake "Heaven" would suggest her outlook is pretty bleak. It's heart-wrenching.

This book would not suit everyone, however, due to the suicidal thoughts and frankly how lifelike and realistic the characters and their perils are, I feel anyone with a history of bullying may struggle greatly with this book so I would not recommend this to them for that reason. However, it is an exceptionally well written book and it will stay with me for a long time.

Thank you so much to netgalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read this. Mieko Kawakami has shot right up there in my list of favourite authors. What an undeniable force.

TW: explicit bullying, underage sex and rape implied, suicidal and self-harm thoughts

This is the story about a boy with a lazy eye and Kojima, the targets for every bully at their school. They start sharing letters and end up meeting to discuss life and bullying. It's a coming of age story showing how bullying can make or break you.

This was a such a difficult read. I loved the meaning of the book but it was explicit and cruel, certainly one of these books that goes a little beyond where it's supposed to and ends up being too graphic ('torture porn'). I wouldn't recommend this to everyone, but it's a good novel. Mieko Kawakami is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors, Breasts and Eggs was incredible, too.

Heaven is narrated by an unnamed 14 year old boy, who is referred to as Eyes in the novel, due to his lazy eye. He is bullied relentlessly by his peers at school, especially from a group of boys. He is physically and verbally. One day he finds a letter under his desk at school, which was written by Kojima, a girl in his class that is also bullied. From there the pair get close and develop a friendship where they confide in each other and they finally have someone who they can talk to.

This book is really sad and heart-breaking with the graphic details of the bullying. You really feel for these characters and they are really compelling. Kawakami’s writing is lovely and just really works for how the characters are feeling and dealing with the horrible things that are happening to them. For such a short book, it looks at how each child reflects and gives meaning to the violent behaviours they are subjected to or that they perpetrate. How and why do humans do the things they do, how can some people be so careless for others and then others care so much.

This book is not an easy read, its bleak and sad. But it is a beautiful short book that I would really recommend. I am really looking forward to reading Kawakami’s previous novel Breasts and Eggs and anything she writes and is translated in the future.