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Fiction. Literature. HTML:Seventeen years ago, Sepha Stephanos fled the Ethiopian Revolution for a new start in the United States. Now he finds himself running a failing grocery store in a poor African-American section of Washington, D.C., his only companions two fellow African immigrants who share his bitter nostalgia and longing for his home continent. Years ago and worlds away Sepha could never have imagined a life of such isolation. As his environment begins to change, hope comes in the form of a friendship with new neighbors Judith and Naomi, a white woman and her biracial daughter. But when a series of racial incidents disturbs the community, Sepha may lose everything all over again. Watch a QuickTime interview with Dinaw Mengestu about this book..… (more)
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Mengestu tells the story of three friends, African immigrants all, who
A fire plays a major role in completing the story, and since I am currently seeing a fireman, that caught my eye. It's not, to my surprise, used as a pat plot device, but imbued with a real sense of the inevitability of sadness, loss, and change in the entwined lives of three lovely characters. Naomi, to name but one, is a heartbreakingly well observed actor in the piece despite her tender years, and Judith her mother is such a deftly drawn, conflicted, real person that I was tempted to look her up in the phone book; as for Sepha, he can come stay with me until things get better. That's the kind of connection Mengestu's characters call forth in me, and I hope in you too.
Bravo, Dinaw Mengestu. Thanks. Write...well, publish...more soon, please. Recommended for all readers of fiction.
Its a story about an immigrant from Ethiopia who has been living in Wash, DC for 17 yrs, now has a small, not very
And so the story goes, and this is why I got stuck - it was quite similar to other stories, we don't learn much more. Not that the plight of immigrants is not worthy, but I want to learn more about the character - just who is Sepha Stephanos.
But then, about half-way (not the "50 pages") we finally start to learn about his life in Ethiopia, why he is here in DC. There are some lyrical passages. And some images that will stick with me. It's not as good as What Is The What, but is a worthwhile read. And I'm looking forward to the next one.
The novel revolves around the tribulations of an Ethiopian immigrant named Sepha who lives
Mengestu's style is simple but intoxicating, his spare sentences making for great readability and his command of the novel's alternating temporality betraying an unusually high level of skill. What is perhaps most frustrating about the novel's pacing, then, is that not much happens during its course: to read the trade paperback's blurb on the back is to give away events that occur very near the climax of the book, events that are far less exciting as plot devices than the blurb would make it seem. This, have no doubt, is a novel of moods.
What makes the work seem most plausible, however, is the transitory nature of the main characters. Sepha, Joseph, and Kenneth each have their own reasons for coming to America, and each has reached varying levels of success, and though we only get deep glimpses into Sepha's story, his history adds a humanity to him that might have been lost if Mengestu would have simply cast him as the typical immigrant store-owner. I did not find the payoff nearly as satisfying as the rising action, but if you're not expecting a radical denouement, the read is surprisingly exciting and moving.
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears may not be, at least in my mind, the rookie masterpiece that many critics have claimed it to be, it is nonetheless an impressive and evocative effort that has interesting things to suggest about exile and American life. And it declares that Mengestu is a strong, confident voice that will be worth watching for in the future.
The book tells the tale of Sepha, who
Then the neighbourhood starts to change. White people with more money begin to move in, joggers are suddenly seen in the streets, the statue at the central circle of the neighbourhood gets repaired. As the historic neighbourhood is being renovated, rents go up, and longtime residents are being forced out. Sepha doesn't take sides in this conflict. Partly because he is not that kind of person, observing more than being an activist. But also because he has befriended his new neighbours, Judith and her daughter Naomi, who comes into the store to read Dostoyevsky with him.
The back cover of my edition speaks of a change in Sepha's life, because of this friendship. However, I don't feel it changes him so much. It makes him reconsider who he is, and why he made the choices he made in his life. Despite the open ending, I don't think that Sepha is going to change much. He is just not that kind of person.
I thought this was a good novel, giving insight into a migrant's (or: refugee's) life, into the process of gentrification, and into life in a Washington DC neighbourhood. Even though I have never visited this city in my life, the descriptions were so detailed, especially in the part where Sepha leaves his shop and goes for what ends up to be a big hike, that I felt I was walking there myself. I even looked up some of the places at the Internet! It just made me want to go there. What I also liked about this novel was the way the story of Sepha didn't get too sentimental, even though he had a dramatic history and seemed to be a lonely person.
In America, this violence is more subtle and takes place over a larger expanse of time. It's the violence that comes with re-gentrification and opportunity for profit. We all know the story-it's the story of Cabrini Green in Chicago, for example, and happens in many neighborhoods throughout probably every major city in America and beyond. A neighborhood is affordable to live in and, even if there is crime, there is often a sense of community and similar background. There is also a similar economics at play. So when people with money start to invest in housing in the place, suddenly the cost of housing for the people who have lived their all of their lives rises drastically. Those people are usually evicted and have to move to another location. Meanwhile, those buildings, often tenements, are razed and condos and townhomes that are much more $$$ are erected. I think this often happens because, in a housing boom, people buy into the idea of owning property but often people even in the middle-upper middle class bracket have difficulty buying the housing they want in the neighborhood they want..so they move to neighborhoods where housing is cheaper, which causes those neighborhoods to change in a way that excludes and discriminates against it's long term residents.
I don't think there's an easy answer to this dilemma and often I think it's something that results from local city government policy that perceives the existing citizens as trouble and instead of offering them support, the local government decides to try to push these people to different counties and cities to avoid dealing with the issues of poverty and crime altogether. The mayor and governors see these residents as a loss in terms of tax dollars and a financial strain, not the human factor at all.
But the novel also really shows the possibilities of unusual friendship,a kinship with oddly the great Dostoevsky, and a sense of what an African immigrant's life might be like here in all its assorted new perils and issues. My main issue with it is that it was waaay too short. These ideas and issues are too complex for a mere 228 pages to be fully explored. The novel would be much more realized at 500-600 pages imo.
Favorite quotes:
pg 38: "They had names like Chocolate and Velvet, always things that you could touch and taste because the imagination is nothing if not tactile."
pg 130: "I've never felt a disappointment so close to hatred again."
pg 162-163: "There was a unique fear that came with feeling that it was the inanimate objects around you that frightened you most."
pg. 169: "To what we hope is nothing short of a permanent dawn."
pg. 221: "Our weapons are not accidents. They're a part of who we are."
Some of the beautiful things that Heaven bears, Where we came forth, and once more saw the stars — Dante’s Inferno
One of things I liked about this book was it took place in the Logan Circle neighborhood of DC (with a side trip to Silver Spring, MD). I grew up and spent over 30 years in the area. While I found the passages between Naomi and Sepha moving as they bonded through their shared reading of The Brothers Karamazov, I felt that the attraction between Sepha and Naomi’s mother, Judith, to be forced and lacking chemistry. The story came alive for me as we find out the circumstances surrounding Sepha’s life and subsequent flight from Ethiopia. I enjoyed the interaction between Sepha and his friends as they meet in their favorite bar and play their game “name the African coups and dictators.” When the action briefly moves to Silver Spring, Mengestu helps us understand how newly arrived immigrants live.
The book was honored with as the New York Times Notable Book of the Year and the Guardian First Book Award.
I couldn't stop marking passages down for their beauty and the way they moved me. At one point, Sepha leaves his shop in the middle of the day to follow a happy-seeming tourist couple who had dropped in to buy something. He looks back at his shop:
I can see it clearly from here, everything from the sagging right gutter to the streaks of blue paint along the side to the metal bars over the windows shining in the sun. How is it that in all these years, I've never seen my store look quite like this? I can imagine it wanting to be spared the burden of having to survive another year. The door is unlocked. The sign is flipped to "Open" and the cash register, with its contents totalling $3.28, is ajar. I wonder if this is what it feels like to walk out on your wife and children. If this is what it feels like to leave a car on the side of the highway and never come back for it. What is the proper equation, the perfect simile or metaphor? I'm an immigrant. I should know this. I've done it before.
Ahh, it just hit me in the chest, not in a gratuitous way, but in a true way. I--who am not an immigrant, who did not witness horrors visited on a loved one or lose family in a revolution, who do not live in a poor urban neighborhood, who share with him only a melancholic nature--identified with him viscerally and completely: it's down to the power of Mengestu's writing.
A matter-of fact sadness is at the core of the book, and yet it's never lugubrious or soppy or overwrought; there's plenty of understated humor: "It's nice to think there's a purpose, or even a real decision that turns everything [in one's life] in one direction," remarks Judith, "but that's not always true, is it? We just fall into our lives. How did you get to own a grocery store?" To which Sepha replies, "Some people are just lucky."
Sepha's time reading with Naomi is wonderful. About it, he thinks,
Every time I looked at her I became aware of just how seemingly perfect this time was. I thought about how years from now I would remember this with a crushing, heartbreaking nostalgia, because of course I knew even then that I would eventually find myself standing here alone. And just as that knowledge would threaten to destroy the scene, Naomi would do something small, like turn the page to early or shift in her chair, and I would be happy once again.
Isn't that the secret to the sadness and joy of life, right there? It hit me with the force of its truth.
When Sepha reads, he recalls his father's stories:
The stories he invented himself he told with particular delight. They all began the same way, with the same lighthearted tone, with a small wave of the hand, as if the world were being brushed to the side, which I suppose for him it actually was.
"Ah, that reminds me, Did I tell you about--
The shepherd who beat his sheep too hard
The farmer who was too lazy to plow his fields
The hyena who laughed himself to death
The lion who tried to steal the monkey's dinner
The monkey who tried to steal the lion's dinner?"
Yes, we meet the father this way, casually, through affectionate memories--which makes the crucial scene in the center of the book all the more devastating. Devastating, but not gratuitous, not unbearable.
Let me leave you with one more quote, from when the number of evictions in Sepha's neighborhood has started to rise. He walks by one of the homes:
It didn't matter where you lived, or where you came from, or how far you had traveled, somewhere near you someone was on the run.
Truth.
I loved the book. I loved the characters. I loved the insight. It won't be for everyone: it's very small scale, and it's melancholic--a little too much so for one member of my book group, but absolutely perfect for me. And as I say, there's humor here, and beauty, and love, and the pain is only the natural pain that comes from waking up and finding yourself doomed to be human.
I couldn't stop marking passages down for their beauty and the way they moved me. At one point, Sepha leaves his shop in the middle of the day to follow a happy-seeming tourist couple who had dropped in to buy something. He looks back at his shop:
I can see it clearly from here, everything from the sagging right gutter to the streaks of blue paint along the side to the metal bars over the windows shining in the sun. How is it that in all these years, I've never seen my store look quite like this? I can imagine it wanting to be spared the burden of having to survive another year. The door is unlocked. The sign is flipped to "Open" and the cash register, with its contents totalling $3.28, is ajar. I wonder if this is what it feels like to walk out on your wife and children. If this is what it feels like to leave a car on the side of the highway and never come back for it. What is the proper equation, the perfect simile or metaphor? I'm an immigrant. I should know this. I've done it before.
Ahh, it just hit me in the chest, not in a gratuitous way, but in a true way. I--who am not an immigrant, who did not witness horrors visited on a loved one or lose family in a revolution, who do not live in a poor urban neighborhood, who share with him only a melancholic nature--identified with him viscerally and completely: it's down to the power of Mengestu's writing.
A matter-of fact sadness is at the core of the book, and yet it's never lugubrious or soppy or overwrought; there's plenty of understated humor: "It's nice to think there's a purpose, or even a real decision that turns everything [in one's life] in one direction," remarks Judith, "but that's not always true, is it? We just fall into our lives. How did you get to own a grocery store?" To which Sepha replies, "Some people are just lucky."
Sepha's time reading with Naomi is wonderful. About it, he thinks,
Every time I looked at her I became aware of just how seemingly perfect this time was. I thought about how years from now I would remember this with a crushing, heartbreaking nostalgia, because of course I knew even then that I would eventually find myself standing here alone. And just as that knowledge would threaten to destroy the scene, Naomi would do something small, like turn the page to early or shift in her chair, and I would be happy once again.
Isn't that the secret to the sadness and joy of life, right there? It hit me with the force of its truth.
When Sepha reads, he recalls his father's stories:
The stories he invented himself he told with particular delight. They all began the same way, with the same lighthearted tone, with a small wave of the hand, as if the world were being brushed to the side, which I suppose for him it actually was.
"Ah, that reminds me, Did I tell you about--
The shepherd who beat his sheep too hard
The farmer who was too lazy to plow his fields
The hyena who laughed himself to death
The lion who tried to steal the monkey's dinner
The monkey who tried to steal the lion's dinner?"
Yes, we meet the father this way, casually, through affectionate memories--which makes the crucial scene in the center of the book all the more devastating. Devastating, but not gratuitous, not unbearable.
Let me leave you with one more quote, from when the number of evictions in Sepha's neighborhood has started to rise. He walks by one of the homes:
It didn't matter where you lived, or where you came from, or how far you had traveled, somewhere near you someone was on the run.
Truth.
I loved the book. I loved the characters. I loved the insight. It won't be for everyone: it's very small scale, and it's melancholic--a little too much so for one member of my book group, but absolutely perfect for me. And as I say, there's humor here, and beauty, and love, and the pain is only the natural pain that comes from waking up and finding yourself doomed to be human.
I found this author’s writing deeply moving and very sensitively written. I fell in love with its setting (warts and all, due to gentrification) because I really love living in the Washington, DC. area, and find it fun to read about places I know fairly well. In one part of the story, the author describes the feeling of powerlessness and sadness when a familiar old neighborhood undergoes sudden, drastic change due to needs of the more affluent members of our community. I empathize with his concerns.
While reading this book, I felt the need to learn more about Ethiopian immigrant communities in the United States. I discovered that the largest Ethiopian community in the United States is located in my own county within Maryland. I love when fiction has this impact on me!
My favorite corner store in Seattle was open 24/7, sold cigarettes and basic food stuffs and had a soda fountain so you could buy a great big Dr. Pepper with tons of ice. The owners were Pakistani and always a source for great conversation. Eventually they added a case where they sold pizza by the slice and home made samosas. I miss going there since I left Seattle. My current corner store is owned by these really cool brothers from Syria. They put a lot of work into refreshing the store when they bought it, including installing a tile floor with an Arabic pattern in it that is stunning. They are also very nice and call me "beautiful lady."
The corner store that The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears reminds me of is another Seattle corner store. I went there sometimes when I lived in the Pike/Pine corridor right before I moved in with my husband in Lake City. It was very mysterious. Owned by Ethiopians, carried mostly Ethiopian food stuffs, dimly lighted and filled with smells of all kinds of spices.
It had an old-fashioned screen door (I love the sound of a screen door) and when you entered there was usually one man behind the counter and a group of three or four men at a table off to the side drinking coffee and I suspect talking politics, although I didn't understand their language. They were never friendly, but never unfriendly - just sort of neutral. They seemed isolated in their own little immigrant world and I never could find a way to penetrate that. I imagine Sepha's corner store like this one.
This is a beautiful subtle novel about an Ethiopian immigrant who comes to America all alone at 17 and years later finds himself the proprietor of a failing corner store in a gentrifying neighborhood. Sepha is lonely, but less so when he meets and befriends Judith and her multi-racial daughter, Naomi who renovate and move into one of the huge old houses down the street. Sepha develops a crush on Judith that seems to be reciprocated, but the biggest surprise is his relationship to Naomi, solidified over a copy of The Brothers Karamazov.
Mr. Mengetsu writes beautifully and captures and delivers moments that are so palpable you could touch them. His characters and sense of place are rich and deep. I said earlier this was a subtle book - by that I mean it isn't filled with big moments - rather it is stitched together out of the ordinary moments of our lives. There is despair here, loneliness, fear, and racism, but there is also wit, and joy. Highly recommended.