The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

A Novel

English language

Published Dec. 22, 2023 by Penguin Publishing Group.

ISBN:
978-0-593-42294-6
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(11 reviews)

From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah’s Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them.

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor …

8 editions

Waaaay too many characters and tangents.

Honestly I thought about DNFing this near the beginning, but Chona grew on me and I wanted to see what she was able to accomplish. Even with her being one of the main characters, you really don't get to know or see much about her. That was disappointing.

This book greatly suffers from having way too many characters introduced, just for them to disappear for the rest of the book. At first I found it interesting to see how the stories would like up and intersect, but it just got to be too much. There was no time to actual develop anything thoughts or feelings towards most of the characters because you just got a quick snippet of them.

Also, ABSOLUTELY check the trigger warnings on this. I didn't think it was one that would need it due to it being the book of the year, but boy was that …

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