The Heavens

The Heavens is an interesting and largely successful mix of pop literary, historical fiction, and speculative fiction - with heavy helpings of romance and political commentary too. Its basic premise is a promising one: Kate, an otherwise ordinary twenty-something living in New York, lives another life in her sleep. In intermittent dreams she finds herself inhabiting the body of a woman, Emilia, in 1593 England. The chapters are told in alternating PoV. Odd numbered chapters are from the PoV of Ben, starting on the night he meets and falls in love with Kate. Even numbered chapters are from the PoV of Kate, usually inhabiting the body of Emilia.

It was a stay-up-late-to-finish read for me; Newman mixes in plenty of sharp details and moments of humor but overall moves at a brisk pace. That said, I can't give it 5 stars due to some plot holes towards the end that took me out of the story a bit.

SPOILERS BELOW

Things that bothered me:

• There's a moment towards the end of the story, in Ben's PoV, after he has stormed out of the mental hospital where Kate is being kept, where Kate's mother calls and tells him she has died in a fire. This doesn't seem like it should be possible? The universe resets when Kate goes back in time and changes something. If she's dead, the universe can't reset. I wish this had been omitted because it confused me and also serves no real purpose.

• I didn't like the Jose reveal. Or rather, I liked it a lot, but I wished it had happened many chapters earlier. The way the book is structured allows her to hide Jose's identity - he is only ever thought of as a character when we're in Ben's PoV. But I don't think it makes sense that Kate would never think of Jose in her chapters - even if he's not there, as one of two time travelers she knows, he would come up when she's obsessing over what to do. There is a sort of incoherent dreaminess to Kate's Emilia chapters that also helps disguise Jose's identity, but honestly the incoherence annoyed me. Just don't try to make it a surprise, let Kate have her full faculties in England, and come up with some other twist for the end.

• I thought the explanation for the time traveling was mildly unsatisfying, and I particularly disliked the idea that people trying to make things better always inherently make things worse.

Things I loved:

• I did however love the overall message that people trying to save the world inherently make things work. I enjoyed the critique of great man theory.

• I really liked the romance between Ben and Kate. I think if you didn't buy it, it would make the book unreadable, but l was into it. I was also really moved by Ben's internal conflicts around loving Kate and being afraid of her mental illness, given his past with his mother, which was seeded early in the story like a Checkov's gun.

• I enjoyed the shifting universes each time Kate woke up, and the way her world kept getting closer to our own. I often these days, when looking at the world, feel a helpless "why does everything keep getting worse?" - this is a fantastic interpretation/variation of that feeling.

Overall, happily recommended.

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.

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.