Warning: unpopular literary opinion.

This book was everywhere last year (meaning 2023). The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by respected, successful author James McBride was called a top novel of the year, including at Goodreads. But how a third of Goodreads readers rate this five stars, I have no earthly (haha) idea. Sure, as one reader put it, “all the ‘classic’ novel ingredients are there …. but nobody put them together very well” (Sara the Librarian). There is great writing (if you mean poetic and descriptive and innovative). There are gripping scenes and a cast of interesting characters. There are a host of social issues that tug at the heart strings. There’s a mystery and an ending. But what sits in between? A mess of a meandering story chock full of irrelevant characters that you cannot keep track of, random rabbit trails, and scenes unrelated to the actual story. I’m not lying.

Should I even give you the blurb? Because you should forget all expectations of a plot here, if you plan to go ahead and read it. Which I’m not a hundred percent telling you not to do.

Big sigh.

There’s a body in a well and it’s old. How did it get there? We’re about to unwind time to the 1920s when about 5,000 characters are warming up for their role in this mystery (or not. Who are we to say at this point?). It’s small town Pennsylvania, and the Jewish people have mostly come down off Chicken Hill even though they are not white and Christian. The Black people are still on the Hill. And any other sort of immigrant that might come into town? Also not white and Christian (enough). There’s a lot of politics, a lot of disenfranchisement, a lot of prejudice, and one character that gives a crap, Chona. Chona (Jewish) owns the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store in the heart of Black Chicken Hill and she cares. She cares about the people around her, and she cares about the deaf and mute boy who is wanted by the state so that they can put him in an asylum. So she helps to hide him. But that’s not going to go over so well with the powerful elite down in Pottstown.

If you can remember that there is a mystery going on during this book you might have a little more fun. Whose body is it? But most people seem to forget that this was the set-up when they have waded out into the depths of this book. That was definitely me. I had a hard time continuing. I had a hard time finishing it. I actually set it aside for a few months right in the middle because I was so frustrated with it. Why?

I’m tired of the gatekeepers (?) being all like “the writing is so good, this author can really write” but there’s no plot and thin characters and confusion on every page. No plot and thin characters and confusion on every page is not great or even good writing! Even if it is poetic! Even if it is innovative! Even if the phrases and metaphors and descriptions are pure gold! Great writing clarifies things for the reader and tells a story! Great writing comes from killing all the darlings that don’t belong in this particular binding.

Heaven & Earth’s characters are a heap of indistinguishable peeps, many of them whom we are uninvested in. There should have been way less of them, some playing multiple roles, and we should have understood by context who was going to be important and enough about them so that when they walked back in later, we’d know who they were and what they were doing there. That’s not asking too much.

Heaven & Earth’s plot is laid out as a mystery that is dropped for almost the entire book and “justified” by weaving it all together at the end. Supposedly. This didn’t work. It lost us for almost the whole reading and then the ending was very slap-dash, leading me to realize the beginning (that I had read months before at this point) was very, very misleading.

Also, it’s supposed to be uplifting? That’s what many reviews and blurbs claim. They wish! Heaven & Earth was horrifying and depressing and included no less than two incidences of rape, both involving a child in one way or another. Were there positive characters in the book? Doing some good things? Yes. But most of them I couldn’t remember, and the goodness was outweighed (like an elephant to a peach outweighed) by the awfulness of what happens to all of these people and also by the sheer horror of some of the more disturbing scenes (and characters).

Not that I was all-in in these scenes, anyhow. McBride’s writing, at least here, is quite confusing. I read literary fiction. I read poetry. I understand history. I read like a hundred books a year. But I was often confused by the jumping in time, jumping in perspective, jumping to characters that may or may not be a part of the actual story, incidences that may or may not be adding to the story… I couldn’t settle in these otherwise historical scenes. McBride jumped around so much, I couldn’t focus long enough to understand, let alone enjoy the read.

And just to show you that I am not the only one who feels exactly this way about this critically acclaimed novel, I have some quotes from an article on A Blog of Books and Musicals. “Half the people I actually did remember ended up never showing up again in any significant capacity, and others that I dismissed as one-scene weirdos actually ended up being frustratingly important at the end of it all” (“The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store (Mini Book Review),” Audra). “When McBride actually bothers to focus, his writing is insightful and purposeful. The problem is that he so rarely focuses. There’s so much going on and so little of it does anything. / The most frustrating part of The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store is that there are a couple of moments of brilliance…” (ibid., which means the quote is from the same person as the one before, if you don’t remember that from college.). “…the line in the blurb about life and community sustaining us through the dark times implied to me that the overall impression would be one of hope, not despair. I did not close the book thinking about life and community. I was thinking, ‘I can’t believe I had to read two graphic, explicit descriptions of sexual assault (one against a child) that result in a death’” (ibid.).

So there you have it. A grumpy review for a book I fully expected to love that let me down page after page, that with a whole lot of editing and humility could have been wrestled into a beautiful, meaningful thing. You might call it one of the top books of 2023. I’m just going to move on with my life, pick up the next book and keep reading.

James McBride is the son of a Black reverend (who died in his 40s of cancer), and a Polish Jewish woman who converted to Christianity. He grew up in Brooklyn’s housing projects. He is probably best known for his 1990s-published memoir The Color of Water (a brick of a book and a modern classic). His 2013 book The Good Lord Bird won the National Book Award. Deacon King Kong was easily one of the top books of 2020. And he has a number of other books, praise from President Barak Obama and Oprah Winfrey, and a National Humanities Medal. He has also been a member of the Rock Bottom Remainders. (Jealous.)

Despite my harping on, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store was (and still is, I suppose) everywhere. It was both Amazon’s and Barnes and Noble’s Book of the Year and won the Kirkus Prize.

I still want to read The Color of Water (memoir) and Deacon King Kong, maybe The Good Lord Bird.

His website: HERE.

His books:

• Miracle at St. Anna
• The Good Lord Bird
• Song Yet Sung
• The Color of Water
• Deacon King Kong
• Kill ‘Em and Leave
• Five Carat Soul
• The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

“’That woman,’ his cousin Isaac grumbled, ‘is a real Bulgarian. Whenever they fee like working, they sit and wait till the feeling passes. They can’t pour a glass of water without making a party of it’” (p19-20

“I don’t ask her no questions. I like breathing” (p94).

“He was a true Jew, a man of ideas who understood the meaning of celebration and music and that the blend of those things meant life itself” (p220).

“…a device that fed them their oppression disguised as free thought” (p226).

“You will not find one parent in ten thousand who would raise their child to be a murderer acting like they got God’s understanding” (p244-245).

“But pretending to know everything and acting like you’re better than you know you are puts a terrible strain on a body. It makes you a stumbling stone to your own justice” (p245).

“’Rumors don’t prove much.’ / ‘They prove people can talk is all…’” (p260).

“To her, the world was not a china closet where you admire this and don’t touch that. Rather, she saw it as a place where every act of living was a chance for tikkun olam, to improve the world” (p275).

“And the absence of her meant a thousand tomorrows empty of whatever promise they had once held” (p276).

“’A lawyer will get it done. This is a land of laws.’ / ’White folks’ laws,’ Nate said softly, ‘The minute you leave the room, the next white fell comes along and the law is how he says it is’” (p281).

“Now there’s man’s understanding and there’s women’s understanding. There is white folks’ understanding and Negroes’ understanding. And then there is just plain wisdom” (p297).

“Everything got everything to do with everything” (p307).

There was some buzz in May of 2024 about Spielberg producing an A24 adaptation of Heaven & Earth, but it’s too early with too little info to say whether it’s likely to happen or not.