Open, Heaven

by Seán Hewitt

A stunning debut novel from the acclaimed young Irish poet Seán Hewitt, reminiscent of Garth Greenwell and Douglas Stuart in the intensity of its evocation of sexual awakening.

Set in a remote village in the North of England, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year in which two sixteen year old boys meet and transform each other’s lives.

James—a sheltered, shy sixteen-year-old—is alone in his newly discovered sexuality, full of an unruly desire but entirely inexperienced. As he is beginning to understand himself and his longings, he also realizes how his feelings threaten to separate him from his family and the rural community he has grown up in. He dreams of another life, fantasizing about what lies beyond the village’s leaf-ribboned boundaries, beyond his autonomy, tenderness, sex. Then, in the autumn of 2002, he meets Luke, a slightly older boy, handsome, unkempt, who comes with a reputation for danger. Abandoned by his parents—his father imprisoned, and his mother having moved to France for another man—Luke has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle at their farm just outside the village. James is immediately drawn to him, like the pull a fire makes on the air, dragging things into it and blazing them into its hot, white centre, drawn to this boy who is beautiful and impulsive, charismatic, troubled. But underneath Luke’s bravado is a deep wound—a longing for the love of his father and for the stability of family life.

Open, Heaven is a novel about desire, yearning, and the terror of first love. With the striking economy and lyricism that animate his work as a poet, Hewitt has written a mesmerizing hymn to boyhood, sensuality, and love in all its forms. A truly exceptional debut.

Genres: Fiction, Queer, LGBT, Literary Fiction, Romance, Contemporary, Gay

224 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 2025

About the author

Seán Hewitt's debut collection of poetry, Tongues of Fire (2020), won the Laurel Prize in 2021. His memoir, All Down Darkness Wide (2022), won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2022. He lives in Dublin.

Reviews

[Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

well holy fucking shit that was sensational

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

What I will give this book props for is that it captures gay male yearning very well. Our protagonist, James, crushes hard on the “dangerous” handsome older bad boy Luke, and Sean Hewitt milks his tortured longing for every pining-filled phrase possible. James’s desire for Luke is palpable and if you’re a queer man who’s ever had an unrequited longing for another guy… I’d be surprised if this novel doesn’t bring back memories in some shape or form.

In terms of constructive critiques, I do agree with other reviewers who say that Hewitt’s writing is on the flowery side, though after awhile I didn’t mind it and actually found it quite digestible, even if at times a little much. The book as a whole just felt a little incomplete to me – Hewitt captures gay male yearning nicely, though other elements of James’s life (aside from his relationship with his younger brother, which was interesting) didn’t seem well-developed. For example, in the prologue we learn that James’s marriage many years after Luke didn’t work out, in part because of James’s unresolved feelings for Luke. Reading this made me go like… omg wait say more, what didn’t work about it let’s get into the mess?? But we didn’t get into that mess unfortunately. I can see why some reviewers felt that this book more or less rehashed common tropes/themes already prominent in gay lit.

In sum, rounding up to four stars because it’s Pride Month and I for better or worse (likely worse) have been as down bad for another man as James was for Luke. And I will say, at least the gay longing in this book felt relatively earned – like at least Luke does treat James decently – whereas in a lot of other gay fiction I feel like abuse and unhealthy power dynamics are more normalized.

[Marieke (mariekes_mesmerizing_books) · Rating 5 out of 5]

His escape was the inverse of mine, his history the history I was trying to run from, the one he was trying to run back towards.

Think of the aching longing in Swimming in the Dark, the beautiful writing of Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo, and perhaps most of all, the dual timeline and heartbreak of Philippe Besson’s Lie with Me. But be aware that this is not a romance or a love story.

Open, Heaven is a stunningly written coming-of-age novel, and I’m a sucker for those. The yearning, the pain—give me all of it. So when a friend recommended Open, Heaven, a book I hadn’t even heard of before, I rushed to NetGalley, saw it was on Read Now, and immediately downloaded it. I dove in right away.

This is one of those quiet books that carry immense emotions. It’s about love and connection, about chasing dreams. But it’s also about the push and pull of time—the urge to escape into the future while simultaneously wanting to freeze the present. And, in reverse, the desperate need to hold on to the past, even when a glorious future awaits.

Thank you, Knopf and NetGalley, for this breathtaking coming-of-age story!

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[Meike · Rating 5 out of 5]

The protagonist in Seán Hewitt's acclaimed debut novel is struggling with a life crisis: he is facing divorce from his husband. In search of the reasons for the failure of love, he travels to his home village in England, where he fell in love as a teenager 20 years ago with the rebellious Luke, who disappeared from his life a year later.

Hewitt's text explores the question of how first love shapes our view of relationships. Readers never know more about the mysterious Luke than the main character James: what exactly happened or what the teenager in love merely wished or imagined remains partly unclear. Luke is a projection screen for James' self-discovery.

The title of the novel is a reference to William Blake's epic poem “Milton”, in which the blossoming of flowers is described as the opening of their heavens. Hewitt's novel depicts the transition to adulthood and the passing of time. The seasons are both a structural and a plot element: Hewitt wrote the first version of the story over the course of a year, and the course of the seasons in the novel corresponds to the stages of time during the writing process.

Like James, Hewitt also grew up in an English village, but the story is not autobiographical. The author is concerned with the general experience of first love and its effects. You can tell from his text that an award-winning poet is writing here: The sentences are atmospherically dense, the intense emotional states of the teenager James, his insecurity and his desire come across as vivid and stirring.

Seán Hewitt's novel is an artfully composed, emotionally intense story about first love, memory and the passing of time.

You can listen to my conversation with Seán here: https://papierstaupodcast.de/special/...

And to the discussion on the podcast (in German) here:
https://papierstaupodcast.de/podcast/...

And to my radio piece (also in German) here:
https://www.sr.de/sr/srkultur/home/ak...

[enzoreads · Rating 4 out of 5]

pcq on a pas le droit au bonheur quand on est gay j’avais oublié

[alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

i did not intend on loving this book as much as i did.

Open, Heaven is very reminiscent of douglas stuart’s works (gorgeous writing of a sad gay teenager Going Through It™️) and that is exactly up my alley. it also captures queer yearning in a similar way to Sunburn by chloe michelle howarth which, by the way, is one of my favorite books of all time. so essentially this book was made for me.

the main character was painted so vividly that i wanted to crawl into this book and give him a hug because goddamn does he need one. i felt his sorrow, his agony, and his typical teenage angst as if all of his emotions were my very own. the descriptions of how james (the mc) feels toward luke really tugged at my heart. i love stories that capture what it feels like to be young and in love—especially with queerness involved. it’s both painful and wonderful to see how quickly your life can revolve around a single person and the fear that they may not reciprocate those feelings. and oh my god, the writing. i could drone on and on about it but as soon as i get my hands on a physical copy you better believe it will be so marked up it will basically become unreadable.

gosh, this book hurt. but it hurt in such a beautiful, perfect way that i’m completely fine with. i want to turn this book into a teddy bear and hug it.

tl;dr: gorgeous, sad, heartbreaking, and perfectly queer novel that quite frankly ruined my life in the best way possible

(thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the arc!)

[Vartika · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's no doubt that Seán Hewitt writes beautifully, but already in its first quarter it's evident that Open, Heaven is a mere variation on a very archetypal – even trite – queer male coming-of-age story: the isolation, the longing, the idle fantasizing, and the denial, held up by the insufficient scaffolding of a rather stilted plot. It's not just that this book seems to reinforce the idea of queerness as suffering or passivity – our protagonist James is still holding out for the most remote possibility of his first love re-entering and transforming his staid life twenty years (and a failed marriage) later – or that it repeats the trope of the loner/ dark edge romance, but also that it is simply missing the dynamism that pushes such stories beyond relatable to genuinely arresting. The most obvious comparison here is Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (and perhaps André Aciman's Call Me By Your Name), but the construction of secondary characters and relationships here is much weaker, and the tale has by now been told enough times for such a milquetoast telling to leave much of an impression.

[Stephen the Bookworm · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Love confused me, bewildered me, tore me apart, but not because it was not love, but because I thought it was fake, some unreal version that did not accord with the love I had dreamt alone"

Open Heaven is a beautiful that truly digs deep into the first love and emotions of a teenager=James. After a twenty year gap he returns to the area he grew up in and which had a profound effect upon his future life.

James lives in a quiet village community; trying to define his path in the world and his own identity - he is gay and open. Felling isolated and having no true friends, he lives a solitary existence beyond the classroom with his parents and young brother Eddie who suffers from seizures. Upon taking up a part time job helping the milkman, he fantasises about meeting men and chances upon encountering Luke- a young man who staying on a farm with relatives . Initially appearing distant and alien to James, Luke holds a deep attraction and fascination.

This is such a tender tory set over one year and the friendship that builds between the two boys- the emotions felt by James are truly raw and palpable and should connect with all readers who have endured the 'eternal turmoil' and yearning of a first love. The second guessing; the power of the imagination; the loneliness of not being able to express or understand feelings and the utter solitariness felt by James is incredibly moving. He is also torn between familial duty - especially towards his young brother- and its 'suffocation" and the need to be free. The interplay between the two characters is pitch perfect.

Seán Hewitt has created a compassionate and at times raw coming of age story- nuanced; laden with beautiful prose and nostalgic.

This is a book for YA readership and adults alike - an eternal tale in which all readers should recognise elements of themselves as they navigate/ed the exploration of love and identity

A beautiful debut and highly recommended

[Constantine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ ½
Genre: Literary Fiction + LGBTQ+

This is a coming-of-age story that takes place in a remote English village. The story follows a sixteen-year-old boy, James, who is trying to come to terms with his sexuality, shyness, and life obstacles. When Luke comes into the picture, James becomes totally smitten by him, despite having a different personality than him.

The story is very well written. The lyrical and poetic prose of the author shines throughout the book. The author is an acclaimed poet, so no wonder his prose is very rich even if this is his debut novel. The coming-of-age story is very raw and real. I feel every reader will find something in James that will remind them of their own experiences when they were that young.

Sean Hewitt excelled in creating the perfect setting that will make the main character feel isolated, both from inside and outside. The remote village with the changing seasons that the author implemented in the book enriches the reading experience.

There’s something about the book's tone that resonates with me. It’s quite melancholic and bittersweet, infused with a sense of longing and heartache. This atmosphere complements the story and the character’s journey. I loved it! It’s beautiful, full of emotional depth and tenderness.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the ARC of this book.

[Carl (Hiatus. IBB in Jan) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Open, Heaven by poet Seán Hewitt is a heart wrenching debut fiction novel that lingers as it unravels in lyrical prose, transporting the reader through time, memory and longing. It is a deeply emotional meditation of desire, nostalgia and self-discovery. Hewitt’s poetic background is evident in every passage of this lyrical and emotional narrative. The story revisits one nostalgic period in the protagonist's teenagehood, twenty years from the present, where James is confronted with an all-consuming teenage love with the weight of adulthood’s regrets.

The novel moves in flashes and snippets and glimpses of a past long lost, laced with longing and shame. Time is a recurrent theme and the source of the nostalgia Hewitt's prose provides. The writing is immersive and has a dreamlike quality to it, yet grounded in moments of aching truth. In a fictitious idyllic village of Thornsmere, frozen in a time between the Great Wars, James returns to his hometown, where an old farm is for sale. As he looks around the property, he is confronted with the sense time only moves forward. Reflecting on his adolescence, James sees himself as a lonely, introverted and sensitive boy grappling with loneliness and friendlessness. Hewitt's portrayal of teenage desire materialises with depictions that are frequently suggestive and ambiguous, with an intense sexual tension and yearning conveyed through rich imagery.

At the centre of the story is James' friendship with the troublesome, charming, newly arrived seventeen-year-old, Luke. Hewitt captures adolescent yearning with raw precision, the desperate fear of being seen, yet an even greater fear of being invisible. The novel encapsulates that intensity, the way desire can consume, distort, and define a person. Hewitt is a master in describing longing, similar to the works of André Aciman. James' obsession with Luke is visceral, feverish, and frustratingly platonic. The smallest details (a trail of hair, the warmth of shared spit on a bottle, the imprint of a hand) become a fixation. Some moments ache with an almost unbearable intensity and intimacy, creating the sense of being on the precipice of something both thrilling and disastrous.

Open, Heaven is not just a story of longing, but also a meditation on memory and the impossibility of returning to the past. James is caught between what was and what can never be again. He clings to the past as if it could offer salvation, only to realise that his love for Luke was always, in some way, dissonant. The novel captures this realisation in stark clarity and it is beautifully melancholic. Hewitt’s prose, while stunning, is occasionally frustrating, leaving some moments feeling incomplete. There is an overwhelming sense of longing, but at times, the weight of it risks becoming suffocating and unsatisfying. Nevertheless, Hewitt's portrayal of James' immaturity and tenderness is beautifully exposed.

Still, Open, Heaven is a remarkable novel that aches and burns with a quiet ferocity. Hewitt captures the rawness of queer desire, the melancholia of revisiting the past, and the loneliness of a platonic love that never quite materialised. It is a book that will stay with you, its sunlight breaking through the your memory with a warm feeling of nostalgia.

Rating: 3.5/5

Disclaimer: I received an Advance Reader Copy (ARC) of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

Quotes might differ slightly from the final printed version:

"There are intervals of light and dark overhead, like the sun breaking through willows, and it always brings me back here: one year, when I am sixteen years old.

“Time runs faster backwards. The years–long, arduous, and uncertain when taken one by one–unspool quickly, turning liquid, so one summer becomes a shimmering light that, almost as soon as it appears in the mind, is subsumed into a dark winter, a relapse of blackness that flashes to reveal a face, a fireside, a snow-encrusted garden. And then the garden sends its snow upwards, into the sky, gathers back its fallen leaves, and blooms again in reverse."

“I could not take my eyes off him. I didn’t believe any of his anger was his alone… When he was alone, inside himself, he was pure, golden”

[nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Major thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for offering me an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts: 

"..𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩, 𝘴𝘰 𝘐 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘴𝘮𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘰𝘧𝘧 𝘩𝘪𝘮, 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘢𝘭𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦 𝘩𝘪𝘮 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘮𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘩. 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵, 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘱𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘦, 𝘴𝘰 𝘤𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘪𝘮, 𝘴𝘰 𝘤𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳, 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢 𝘴𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘵 𝘴𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘥 𝘐 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘴 𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘬𝘪𝘴𝘴 𝘩𝘪𝘮."

Still coming off the high and glory of this one. Gay. Sapphic. Adolescent. Poetic. Shameful. Full of love. The impossible kind. The one we only find in the movies. But the one necessary to aid us through our reality. At the liminal lines of fantasy and pleasure, all we want is to be wanted until we become needed.

[Amina · Rating 3 out of 5]

✰ 2.75 stars ✰

“I understood that this was what desire was: wanting something I could not have, dreaming of holding it.”

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎It's a coming-of-age, which in fact, feels like one that never became of age, for how much James still seems stuck in the past in a relationship that he aspired to be more than what it was, even when he learned how it was possible to love someone in different ways. ❤️‍🩹 It's a painful reckoning that his return home reminded him of how much he has given up in holding on to a memory that may not have mattered to the one who made it matter; and that's really sad...

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎The tone of the narrative seemed two-ways, as in a bit unbalanced; like at times I was always uncertain of whether or not it would take a more sinister dark turn, considering how Luke's father's presence loomed over James as a foreboding one. 😥 But, then a part of me reasons that once the "real" truth was revealed, that those innate fears were rather James' own fear of his feelings for Luke being found out. How he forced himself to bury how much he craved more with Luke with a fierce, fervent desperate hunger, but resigned himself to the satisfaction that his friendship was enough. 😔

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎It may have been a bittersweet pill to swallow, but I thought it captured the different ways one does love in a convincing fashion. While I did view Billy's conflict as a necessary plot catalyst to drive that wedge between the two, it's those few but meaningful moments '– the distance, the watching but never touching - they shared that no one really taught James that there were different ways to express the love you could have for someone. 🫂 So touch-starved, so lonely, so hopeful to connect with someone, you forget what it means to maybe, just be a friend.

“And I never knew, not now or then, whether he was even aware of how indelible those marks were, or how, in the deepest marrow of my body, all I had wanted through the intervening years was to find him.”

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎Did Luke lead James on? Was he using him to feel the void of the absence of his father, under the pretense of offering something more? Was it really them just being friends and nothing more? I never quite got a handle on his feelings, nor a clear understanding of whether or not his motives had been pure, or just seeing James as a means to an end, he knew James would never be a part of?

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎I wouldn't say that the writing was flowery, but it did seem to be borderline verbose and excessive as in expressing to the utmost detail how James' feelings seemed to transcend beyond simplicity. As in it could simply be a straightforward exchange of hello/hi, and yet, in his love-hopeful eyes, it would be a matter of crossing a drawbridge to hear those words. 🥺 The repetitive way in which he wistfully longed for more was almost a reasoning of his own acceptance of the delusion of disillusion he had painted in his heart and soul.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎And a part of me feels that maybe it was deliberate; to echo how we make our first loves grander than what they actually are. Yes, I did find myself rolling my eyes at these longings that echoed here 'we were the realist thing either of us had. 😮‍💨 But, it was the tipping point James needed to hear, I suppose, to break free... The sad reality, though, is did he? 😟

“It had cost me so much, that intensity of love...”

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎The ending is kind of a sombre if not disheartening one; as in, by returning to the "crime scene" so to speak, you get a sense that James' entire life was so afflicted by this one year spent in yearning for someone's heart and attention, that the twenty years since - he never achieved that same feeling of desire or yearning. 😢 And that's rather sad to think about that rather than being an Open, Heaven, was it rather a path to a memory he would never be able to free himself of? It's not a healthy ending, for sure, one could even say it's quite pathetic of how much he gave up on himself, but it just kinda sucks how he turned out, simply because he never really got over his first love. 😞

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎A part of me also can't help but sympathize and empathize with James. How I recognized myself in his actions and thoughts; not concerning Billy or being gay, but rather the unrequited pining, the heartache and heartbreak that follows when the one you want doesn't; how James is ultimately lost. Lost without closure, lost without knowing, lost without the chance of speaking what his heart ached for, not knowing for sure what could have been if chance had allowed, not knowing who he could have been, if he had not experienced the sharp pangs of a first love when 'all the power in my life was his.' 💔

[ceruleanboy · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

Being very brief:
James is annoying. Luke is annoying. The fact that James' marriage ended up because he was still hung up on Luke is plain stupid. They did not have a relationship! They were never in love or anything like that! And it had been TWENTY YEARS! When you are a gay young boy you are bound to fall for straight man, but this does not define our entire lives because we grow up! We meet people. Our brains develop. We change! But James clearly didn't. Besides that, he is longing and yearning and horny almost all the time, and it is so... tiring. Honestly, as the reader, why should one care? The story of the young gay man who comes from a small town and has found nothing buy unrequited love is one that was told so many times, have we not grown past it at this point? Maybe it is my fault to giving a chance to this kind of story. The best parts of the book were the ones that went deeper into James' and Eddie relationship, and Eddie's sickness (that we never understand the full extent of), but James was too damn lonely and horny that he could only think of Luke! And I understand that these kind of stories must be important, but I do not feel great about sitting around reading a book where the character that I am supposed to be rooting for has not an ounce of self-preservation or self-worth!

[Troy]

i really liked a lot of the lush imagery and poetic prose of this novel. it was a deeply felt story that sometimes took me right back to those years of experiencing intense emotions as a queer teen - when you just want desperately to love someone and for them to love you back. some passages literally took my breath away because i was like wow, this is exactly what it’s like. there’s a deep interiority of the first person narrative that just sucks you in and makes you really feel the all encompassing and engrossing nature of jame’s obsession with luke. the story is sentimental and elegiac, full of intense retroactive reflection on jame’s and luke’s friendship.

that being said, i did also feel like there was a certain lack of depth in the characters and their relationship that i craved to be more present in the prose - maybe in lieu of some of the overly descriptive bits of setting, such as landscape and nature. (when i say you are there, you are THERE- Hewitt’s main focus is ensuring that you know exactly where you are with gorgeous imagery and sensory descriptions. it’s quite amazing to behold and I read some of the best sentences ever in this book… but it felt a bit overwrought).

for most of the novel, i didn’t really feel that james and luke’s relationship rang true for me. i was always left wanting more. the narrative lacked a lot of character development that would have yielded a more complex and rich portrayal of these boys and their bond. I felt that didn’t really know the characters that well by the novels conclusion. by the time i reached the end, i wasn’t really convinced of the lifelong duration of jame’s obsession with luke. parts of it felt genuine for sure, but the actual relationship itself left much to be desired in terms of specific characterization. unfortunately it was more of a disappointment than a stellar read for me.

but overall, i still found a lot of passages stunning - an atmospheric slow burn of longing, gay pining and agony.

[Fernanda (ivyfer_isreading) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love coming of age stories, specially when it's about a queer characters. This was so beautifully written, I underlined many, many parts.
It is a tender story about growing up, falling in love and feeling like you don't fit. If you liked Lie With Me or Swimming in the Dark this is the book for you. I felt the main character's pain and suffering like it was my own. The exploration of the topic of first love and how visceral it is hit very close to me.
It is a gorgeous read, and very quick too.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Open, Heaven, the debut novel from Irish poet Seán Hewitt, opens with recent divorcé James returning to his hometown in northern England and contending with the intense memories his homecoming evokes. But it's not his marriage that he's thinking about—his ex-husband, who is never named, doesn't occupy much space in James's mind—it's an intense infatuation he had with another boy in his youth.

Read the rest of my review HERE on BookBrowse.

[leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

a bittersweet and touching little novel about unrelenting yearning and the agony of first love. it has hewitt’s typical poetic writing, and the story itself is beautiful in its simplicity.

thank you vintage books for the arc! open heaven comes out in the uk on 24 april 2025.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 1 out of 5]

Before saying anything else I must explain my awarding this novel one star and shelving it as bad-disappointing - I would not deny that Sean Hewitt can write well and the bare-bones of the bildungsroman first-love story is powerful, nut there was much that I found unsatisfying, indeed much I disliked and found annoying. So my review is going to be about the things about this novel I did not like.

As this is a first-love, bildungsroman story of a teenage gay boy I couldn't help thinking back over all the authors and novels which cover, at least in part some of this territory - 'A Boy's Own Story' by Edmund White; 'A matter of Live and Sex' by Oscar Moore; 'Strange Boy' by Paul Magrs; 'The Good Son' by Paul McVeigh; 'Call Me by Your Name' by Andre Anciman; and 'Lie With Me' by Philippe Besson (although I could also have named his first novel 'In the Absence of Men'). What is startlingly different is that all of the novels listed centred in place, and you are left in no doubt were that place is - from Edmund White's mid-west USA to Anciman's Italian Rivierra, McVeigh's Belfast, Magr's Manchester, Moore's North London suburbs, and Besson's Barbezieux-Saint-Hilaire (or Paris in his first novel) all of them are rooted in the particular but speak to the universal.

But I found the setting of 'Open Heaven' curiously non-specific - it wasn't the USA and although identified as England it could haver been Ireland - but there is the rub is the opaqueness and lack of specifics artistry or artifice? Is Sean Hewitt refusing to be specific for 'art' or is he ensuring that those who see him as Irish are not disillusioned (please see my footnote *1 below).

My biggest complaint against the novel is the use of that hoary old trope of the young 'love' you never quite get over and which blights someone forever. In the hands of Stephen King (in his novella 'Stand by Me') this maudlin concept is nothing but trite sentimentality and can be enjoyed as such. In the hands of Hewitt it is simply annoying because he is too good a writer for the shallow dishonesty of the gay boy who never gets over the straight he first loved. Such a story line is almost as offensive as the gay boy dying in all those terrible pre-Stonewall serious novels dealing with the 'problem' of being gay.

The first boy, and many later boys, I fell in love with were straight - probably most gay boys do, or did (I am honestly to old to know what things are like for a teenage gay boy today) - and like all first loves then can be intense, all consuming and often brief and never properly declared never mind consummated. But you move on and who you are changes and the difference between sixteen and eighteen or nineteen is immense. Once you find real love, or at least sex and list as an adult the obsessions of adolescence grow very small. Gay boys (or straight ones for that matter) don't become trapped by an adolescent obsession over some straight boy that blights their adult lives. This is a trope of bad M&M literature.

Finally although I do think Mr. Hewitt has a powerful authorial voice I found its 'lyricism' describing again, and again, and again, the countryside to obvious and bordering on being de trope. I found these purple passages annoying and nearly stopped me from reading the novel in the opening pages. They cried out 'see how lyrical, how poetic I am' but really good writing doesn't need to announce itself like that.

Enough already - I am in a minority in finding faults with this novel but I am not alone.

*1 Because I heard of Sean Hewitt after he won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature I always took him for Irish so I was somewhat surprised to discover that not only was he born and educated through University in the UK and must have been approaching thirty before he settled in Ireland. I can't help feeling the way the specifics of his UK origins are omitted in the author's blurb is designed to obfuscate the reality Hewitt wants to project. How you define yourself is personal and complex. Despite writing in Finnish will Pajtim Statovci ever cease to be Yugolslavian? Did Nabakov ever cease being Russian? I call myself Irish even though I wasn't born in Ireland but because I lived and went to school there between 11 and 19. Many boys in my school were called Sean, none used that silly accent on their name, but many wore the An Fáinne Nua Airgid or even the An Fáinne Nua Óir. I can't help feeling that by removing details of his UK birth and mentioning only his current residence in Dublin and work at Trinity College Mr. Hewitt is using 'omission' to create confusion.

[nat ୨ৎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

ᯓ★ 4 stars

➤ “Love confused me, bewildered me, tore me apart, but not because it was not love, but because I thought it was a fake, some unreal version that did not accord with the love I had dreamt alone.”

Such an impactful read about a boy wanting to be seen, to be desired, it’s an exploration of sexuality as well as a coming of age story. This is Sean Hewitt’s first novel, and it was a decent one at that!

It was a lot “tell” and no “show” for me, but in a way i sorta find that more insightful (?) I get why it works, we see the main character’s inner dialogue very vividly but part of me really wanted to see more of that connection between him and the object of his desire (Luke)

I think it perfectly describes how a young mind works, how vivid your emotions are and how crucial decisions feel

Plus I LOVED the writing sm, Sean Hewitt is a poet and it shows!!

ೀ QUOTES

Now I was afraid that I would never be myself without him, that if he left I’d always be stuck here, half made, only just beginning.

imagined the blissful moment when the agony ended, when desire ended, when I had him and longing was over. All the power in my life was his.

It was like walking through a folk song that afternoon–the blackbirds and the thrushes, the sweetness of the flowers, the boy I loved, and who might even love me, waiting for me between the trees.

pre-read:

this looks like I could make it my new personality

[mackenzie · Rating 1 out of 5]

all he talked about was how he was attracted to every single man on earth and that he delivered milk. i was 60 pages in and just couldn’t even anymore

[james · Rating 3 out of 5]

perfectly average

[Katie B · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

Wow, I'm impressed OPEN, HEAVEN is a debut novel. At just over 200 pages, it packed quite a punch.

James returns to the village of Thornmere, located in North of England, where an old farm is up for sale. He reflects on the year he was sixteen, back in 2002, when he had come to terms with his sexuality. Luke, a slightly older boy, moves in with his aunt and uncle on the farm after his parents abandoned him. A coming of age novel of sorts, it covers this important year in James's life and how Like made a lasting impression.

Beautiful, heartbreaking and bittersweet. A story about love just as much as how a strong connection can be made when the right person walks into your life at the right time. Those teenage years were a rough period for many of us, and it's a powerful feeling when someone makes you feel a little less alone in this world.

A quiet, well-written novel that's worth checking out.

Thank you Knopf for sending me a free advance copy! All thoughts expressed are my honest opinion.

[Liralen · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's the early 2000s, and life is trudging on in a small village in the north of England. Between the isolation of the town and James's family's difficulties and his own sexuality—which is by and large tolerated, but not really accepted—James is feeling pretty isolated himself. He dreams of connection, of meeting another boy like him. And then a new boy, one who doesn't know James or how he doesn't quite fit into town, arrives, and things start to change.

Our summer should have seemed open-ended. Almost every day was hot, with endless blue skies and the deep green of woods and meadows, but I knew that, before the autumn came around again, Luke would be gone. (loc. 2201*)

File this one under slow-moving, character-driven, beautiful language. James spends so much of his life daydreaming—about boys, mostly, or about men; I've never particularly wanted to be in a teenaged boy's head, but this does rather take us there. But there's quite a bit else going on in his life, including a younger brother whose health is uncertain and a more general desire for connection. As much as James is a ball of unfortunate teenage hormones, a lot of what he dreams of is much less about sex than it is about wanting someone to be close with, someone to touch, in a way that he can't fully articulate. Everything is constantly on the cusp, about to change but not always in ways that James can predict.

I was a bit nervous about the direction the book was taking, but the ending sold this for me—3.5 stars, I think, rounded up. No spoilers, but the plot very much builds toward that end of summer, and there are a number of ways the plot could go. The level of restraint bumped this up for me. One to read when you're in the mood for something introspective and dreamy.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

[Kate O'Shea · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book to read. I advise you to read it slowly and savour the words of this debut novel by poet, Séan Hewitt.

James is a 16 year old boy who has recently come out to his family and friends. He felt isolated before he told people, and as the jibes wore off, he felt even more alone. His mother and father do not seem able to communicate with him, and the main focus is on much younger brother, Eddie, who has some form of unknown condition that causes fugue states and convulsions. James is expected to look after his brother all the time his hardworking parents cannot, and at times, despite loving Eddie, he resents this lack of freedom.

As money is extremely tight James' father gets him a job doing a milk round and it is on the farm that he meets Luke, a troubled young man staying at the farm while his father is in prison.

James becomes enamoured of this young man, and the book centres around one summer as James begins to understand what truly loving someone means for him. He struggles with his responsibilities to his own family with his need to find independence and acceptance.

The whole story is a beautifully told description of James' feelings about his life and his understanding of love and attraction, and I didn't want it to end. The language is evocative of school summers that seem to last forever at that age. James is such a sympathetic character and so clearly drawn by Hewitt's words that I wanted to take his hand and tell him it wouldn't always be this hard.

Beautiful. A stunning debut.

Thank you very much to Netgalley and Random House for the advance review copy. Most appreciated.

[Sophie Quinn · Rating 1 out of 5]

A very very bad rendition of doing nothing new. Felt violated by the male perspective of women that was presented. Perhaps one of the single most pointless books I have ever read. Literally just people walking up hills, indulging in entirely self-obsessive and problematic fantasies, waxing poetical about random flowers (should have suspected as much from the Milton epigraph) which have no bearing on the story. Why the paranoia about the supposedly abusive father? Why the ‘troublesome’ Luke who’s apparently scarred by his parents’ divorce and a difficult upbringing? Cliché, cliché, cliché. Generic, myopic, and underdeveloped. So undeveloped, in fact, that it would only be improved by going back to the drawing board and reevaluating the entire plot and writing style. Even better to just write a different novel with a discernible purpose. Nothing I can say will communicate what an absolute tragedy of literature this book is. Utter, utter shite.

[Luke Lords · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was so beautiful and tender. I saw myself on every page.

[Kyle C · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Open, Heaven” offers a familiar story of unrequited queer love. Following the breakdown of his marriage, James decides to return to his childhood town, a far-flung village surrounded with rolling farmlands in Northern England. Once he arrives, he inspects a house for sale, walks through a small cemetery, and unexpectedly cries in a pub. Lost in his boyhood memories, he recalls his first meeting with his one-time friend, Luke—a blond-haired, free-spirited, cigarette-flicking rebel. Luke had come to the village for the summer to stay with his uncle and work on the farm after his mother had moved to France and his father had been put in jail. To James, Luke presented then and there a counter-vision of himself. James is a cautious, rule-following and poetically minded boy; Luke is gregarious, and uninhibited but also erratic, sometimes playful, sometimes sullen. James is straight but, in a queering of the familiar trope, he functions as a “manic pixie dream boy”—a slim-hipped, taught-muscled seventeen-year-old, who is chaotic and anarchic but also, when alone, can be vulnerable and confessional. He is the type-cast hot boy who alone can draw the shy introvert out from his solipsist brooding. James is immediately infatuated. A lonely, stuttering, introspective outsider, James had never really had any male friends. When the school found out that he was gay, he was immediately excluded from its social life. Luke, the enigmatic interloper, becomes a projection of all James’ fantasies—James follows him everywhere, thinks about him, imagines him compulsively, desperate if not to seduce him, then at least to be close to him.

The novel reminded me a lot of the 2015 movie “Departure”, a film centered around a similarly shy gay teenager, a solitary adolescent and fantasist, who travels with his mother to France and falls in love with a bullish but open-minded local. These are both stories of queer loneliness and the meager salvation of straight-boy affection. While these gay boys may be “soft” or “sensitive”, they are enamored with men’s brash crudeness and thuggish manners, and they are captivated equally with men’s surprising capability for emotional candor when alone. They know their own feelings will never be reciprocated but they hope that mere proximity will be their make-do substitute. There is a bittersweet pain in these confusing friendships which offer them an imperfect template for same-sex love—to be close to a man, to even be touched, to be loved in some measure of the word, but not to be desired. For James, this relationship becomes the archetypal ideal for all his subsequent romances. To be loved in return feels shameful, like a betrayal or a soiling. I think Sean Hewitt captures something very real about the gay experience: there are many men who, like James, growing up with these unrequited crushes, learn a distorted idea of queer love. Having spent their formative years desiring unobtainable boys, they think that love ought to unreciprocated, that their love is superior, purer and nobler when it goes unsatisfied, that if their love was consummated, all their fantasies would be dispelled. They confuse being gay with being lonely, and they idealize the asymmetries of their straight-boy obsessions. It's safer to live with illusions.

In its melancholy frame narrative, a gay man nostalgically returning to his home village, remembering old flames, it also reminded me of Philippe Besson’s “Lie With Me”. And in its exploration of queer desire, the insatiable longing, the puzzling uncertainty, the constant cross-examination and forensic scrutiny of every word, gesture, and interaction, the inability to name and to speak the desire, it also shares a lot in common with Andre Aciman’s “Call Me By Your Name”. Much like in his memoir, Hewitt offers an exegesis of the gay experience of the 2000s. The storyline is not particularly original but Hewitt is at his best when he describes and maps the interior life of growing up gay.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I expect it's me rather than this book but I found it just a bit too archetypical: set over a glorious rural summer with ravishing descriptions of nature, the narrator, James, falls into excruciating first love with the older and troubled Luke.

James' desire is both physical and emotional, and a close adolescent friendship builds between the young men. The writing is lush and sensitive, there's a melancholy heatedness as James recalls this pivotal summer twenty years later. But I was, perhaps unfairly, left feeling this is a bit slight.

With gestures towards The Go-Between for a kind of 'death of the heart' vibe, there's a strange timelessness that niggled: it's 2002 and no-one has a phone and the boys are reading porn magazines?

Ultimately, I found this a bit too neat and easy. The two young men love each other, but with different forms of love - and James is still thinking of Luke when he marries his husband.

A romantic, nostalgic piece that will prove popular, I expect, but I think I wanted something rawer and less finished than this.

Thanks to the publisher for an ARC via Netgalley.

[Mark Kwesi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, this was mesmerizing; though I wouldn’t have expected anything less from Seán Hewitt, whose All Down Darkness Wide I loved to death and will soon re-read. Open, Heaven broke my heart. It’s a small, contained story, yet vast and expansive – the ultimate tale of unrequited love for gay men coming of age. And the meandering, oh, how I loved it. Instant favourite!

[nat can’t read · Rating 3 out of 5]

pre-read: this gives me strong “call me by your name” vibes, and I need something to grasp after reading that masterpiece

I WILL LOVE THIS 🕯️🕯️🕯️

update: I did NOT love this 😁