Esther reviewed The Heavens by Sandra Newman
Strange and beautiful
5 stars
Strange and beautiful
Hardcover, 272 pages
English language
Published Jan. 6, 2019 by Granta Books.
The Heavens
5 stars
(5 reviews)
New York, 2000. Kate and Ben meet at a party and immediately fall in love. It is the first year of the new millennium, the first year without a war anywhere in the world. The United Nations has just planted its flag on Mars, and a Green Party senator is about to become the first female president of the United States. Kate falls asleep, knowing that she is loved.
London, 1593. Kate wakes as Emilia - the mistress of a nobleman - and finds the plague at her door. Afflicted by premonitions of a burnt and lifeless city, she sets out to save the world. Each decision she makes will change her life with Ben forever.
The story of love and alternate universes, madness and time travel, The Heavens is a dream bound up in a strange awakening; it is a novel of what we have lost, and what we …
New York, 2000. Kate and Ben meet at a party and immediately fall in love. It is the first year of the new millennium, the first year without a war anywhere in the world. The United Nations has just planted its flag on Mars, and a Green Party senator is about to become the first female president of the United States. Kate falls asleep, knowing that she is loved.
London, 1593. Kate wakes as Emilia - the mistress of a nobleman - and finds the plague at her door. Afflicted by premonitions of a burnt and lifeless city, she sets out to save the world. Each decision she makes will change her life with Ben forever.
The story of love and alternate universes, madness and time travel, The Heavens is a dream bound up in a strange awakening; it is a novel of what we have lost, and what we might yet be able to save.
sarah reviewed The Heavens by Sandra Newman
gorgeous but sad
5 stars
I love this book and wanted to reread it almost immediately after I first read it, although maybe choosing to read it again as 2020 rolled into 2021 wasn't the wisest idea I've had. If it was one sentence? Humans spoil everything through self-aggrandizement, even when they don't mean to, but lyrical and with time travel. It's a gorgeous book but it is fundamentally sad, so choose your timing carefully.
gimley reviewed The Heavens by Sandra Newman
Review of 'The Heavens' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
As far as real life is concerned, whenever I wake up, I often feel the world has changed. I don't think it's because of my dreams but despite them. We were taught in the spiritual 1960s that we were responsible for everything, even the war in Vietnam. Or was it that we had to take responsibility for everything? (did someone change this while I slept?) Because, at the same time, believing everything was about you is called "Ideas of Reference" and is a symptom of mental illness.
I should have written this review when I finished the book, which was a while ago but at the time it wasn't published yet and I feared it still might change, like reality did for Kate whenever she awoke. So, I'm rereading it now to remind me what it's like and I'm laughing, inappropriately, it turns out since the World Trade towers just …
As far as real life is concerned, whenever I wake up, I often feel the world has changed. I don't think it's because of my dreams but despite them. We were taught in the spiritual 1960s that we were responsible for everything, even the war in Vietnam. Or was it that we had to take responsibility for everything? (did someone change this while I slept?) Because, at the same time, believing everything was about you is called "Ideas of Reference" and is a symptom of mental illness.
I should have written this review when I finished the book, which was a while ago but at the time it wasn't published yet and I feared it still might change, like reality did for Kate whenever she awoke. So, I'm rereading it now to remind me what it's like and I'm laughing, inappropriately, it turns out since the World Trade towers just fell (in the book, I mean) but it's so good and funny.
A writer can change reality intentionally, when the reality is a book. Emilia, who I'd just learned was a real person, wrote at a time when women weren't allowed to change reality or even publish books, but the world has changed since then and she was part of changing it by being a woman who wrote a book so that part turns out to be non-fiction.
And, we write our dreams, because who else could be writing them? And Shakespeare wrote histories, and in this book, inhabited them in HIS dreams. And sometimes I feel like I'm not in the same reality as everyone around me and other times I merely wish it and the world feels like a big psychiatric hospital. Ms. Newman's writing captures all this ambiguity in a time when people are so sure of themselves and think it's OTHER people who live in a bubble.
If you have to look for a moral to the story, it's that technology is limited by our egos. We want to save the world but really we want to be saviors. Instead, the zen goal of being [b:Nothing Special|551604|Nothing Special|Charlotte Joko Beck|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347488729s/551604.jpg|538845] is the only way out. Emilia's enlightenment comes like in a zen story, suddenly and illogically like an off key note in a song.
