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The Heavens
New York, 2000. Kate and Ben meet at a party and fall instantly, irrevocably in love. Around them, the city glows. It is the first year without a war anywhere. A woman is president, and an air of camaraderie permeates the streets of Manhattan. Kate falls asleep, knowing 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 for ever.
A 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.
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 for ever.
A 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.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published February 12, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 877 reviews
February 14, 2019
The Heavens is essentially Sandra Newman's novelized meditation on the Great Man Theory - the idea that history has been shaped by a few influential individuals. Kate, a young woman living in New York City in the early 2000s, believes she's one such person, as she has dreams which propel her into a past timeline where she lives as a mistress in Elizabethan England. When she wakes up, she begins to notice that details about her life have changed overnight, and as she becomes increasingly convinced that her dreams are affecting her reality, her boyfriend Ben becomes concerned about her mental health.
It's particularly difficult to talk about the plot of this book when it's ever-shifting. At the start of the novel Kate and Ben live in a New York that resembles our own, except that we aren't at war and we've elected a green party president named Chen, until one day she wakes up and is informed by her concerned friends that Gore is president, and has been president all along, doesn't she remember? Newman excels at playing with this inherently tenuous atmosphere; whether it's Kate's mental stability or the fabric of the universe that's really on the verge of collapse, there's a palpable fragility at play while you turn these pages, never sure which details are going to shift from one page to the next.
But despite its clever construction, this doesn't completely work from start to finish. Kate's dream narrative is noticeably weaker than that of the present, and the depiction of 1590s England feels almost caricaturish. It also plays with many different lofty ideas and doesn't always follow through with seamless execution; certain plot threads feel abandoned and under-examined, and I thought the resolution undermined a lot of what came before it. But, I haven't completely made up my mind about this book and I'm sure to be mulling it over for days to come, so I'm very curious to see how others will receive this wildly unconventional tale of love and fate and time travel.
Thank you to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review.
It's particularly difficult to talk about the plot of this book when it's ever-shifting. At the start of the novel Kate and Ben live in a New York that resembles our own, except that we aren't at war and we've elected a green party president named Chen, until one day she wakes up and is informed by her concerned friends that Gore is president, and has been president all along, doesn't she remember? Newman excels at playing with this inherently tenuous atmosphere; whether it's Kate's mental stability or the fabric of the universe that's really on the verge of collapse, there's a palpable fragility at play while you turn these pages, never sure which details are going to shift from one page to the next.
But despite its clever construction, this doesn't completely work from start to finish. Kate's dream narrative is noticeably weaker than that of the present, and the depiction of 1590s England feels almost caricaturish. It also plays with many different lofty ideas and doesn't always follow through with seamless execution; certain plot threads feel abandoned and under-examined, and I thought the resolution undermined a lot of what came before it. But, I haven't completely made up my mind about this book and I'm sure to be mulling it over for days to come, so I'm very curious to see how others will receive this wildly unconventional tale of love and fate and time travel.
Thank you to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review.
October 5, 2018
The Heavens is a very different kind of book. There is the present day and then, through the dreams of Kate, we are placed in the past. But things get even more complicated than that because every time that Kate wakes again, in the present, things that she's done in the past, have made changes, big and small, to the present.
I enjoyed the parts of the book that were in the present but when Kate would go back to the past, things really bogged down for me. The manner of speaking of the past made reading very slow going and Kate never figures out what she is trying to do in the past, to help the future. I was left feeling very unclear about what was going on in the book and what was supposed to be going on. Towards the end, another character who dreams like Kate, does give us an explanation for what is happening but I had a hard time understanding it.
I thought the characters were interesting but because the future changed so often, they changed and their surroundings changed, so it didn't feel like we got to be with the same characters very long. I almost want to read the book again to see if I understand it the second time around except that I can't bear to read the past parts again.
Thank you to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for this ARC.
I enjoyed the parts of the book that were in the present but when Kate would go back to the past, things really bogged down for me. The manner of speaking of the past made reading very slow going and Kate never figures out what she is trying to do in the past, to help the future. I was left feeling very unclear about what was going on in the book and what was supposed to be going on. Towards the end, another character who dreams like Kate, does give us an explanation for what is happening but I had a hard time understanding it.
I thought the characters were interesting but because the future changed so often, they changed and their surroundings changed, so it didn't feel like we got to be with the same characters very long. I almost want to read the book again to see if I understand it the second time around except that I can't bear to read the past parts again.
Thank you to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for this ARC.
June 13, 2019
Having seen a few lukewarm reviews of
The Heavens
, my expectations were duly lowered. To my surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed this literary/historical/time-travel mashup.
Kate visits the past in her dreams. 16th century England to be specific. But each time she wakes, in early 2000’s New York, the world around her is a little different. Kate’s the only one who notices the changes and her family and friends think she is losing her grip on reality.
In the original timeline, in the year 2000, the world is peaceful, an idealised version of our world, not perfect, but better. Different in odd ways: like no one has heard of William Shakespeare, who existed but faded into obscurity. In her dreams, Kate interferes in history. She paves the way for Shakespeare’s success, not only in his own time but a legacy enduring for centuries – and as a result the world in 2000 becomes more polluted, more violent, a step closer to total destruction. But this is no random butterfly effect. As a direct result of one man’s elevation to fame and glory, our world sickens.
The Heavens is not without flaws. Each of the lit fic, historical and sci-fi elements, judged in isolation, fell short in one way or another. But they are presented in combination and it is a combination that I happen to really enjoy, so for me this novel was more than the sum of its parts. Additionally, this is a novel without much of a shape, that is to say it does not deliver dramatic peaks or plot twists, neither does it give straightforward answers. And there are some noticeably clunky turns of phrase (eg ‘the baby earsplittingly wailed’). Despite all that I found it to be an engrossing and enjoyable genre-bender with an intriguing take on cosmic karma. 3.5 stars.
Kate visits the past in her dreams. 16th century England to be specific. But each time she wakes, in early 2000’s New York, the world around her is a little different. Kate’s the only one who notices the changes and her family and friends think she is losing her grip on reality.
In the original timeline, in the year 2000, the world is peaceful, an idealised version of our world, not perfect, but better. Different in odd ways: like no one has heard of William Shakespeare, who existed but faded into obscurity. In her dreams, Kate interferes in history. She paves the way for Shakespeare’s success, not only in his own time but a legacy enduring for centuries – and as a result the world in 2000 becomes more polluted, more violent, a step closer to total destruction. But this is no random butterfly effect. As a direct result of one man’s elevation to fame and glory, our world sickens.
The Heavens is not without flaws. Each of the lit fic, historical and sci-fi elements, judged in isolation, fell short in one way or another. But they are presented in combination and it is a combination that I happen to really enjoy, so for me this novel was more than the sum of its parts. Additionally, this is a novel without much of a shape, that is to say it does not deliver dramatic peaks or plot twists, neither does it give straightforward answers. And there are some noticeably clunky turns of phrase (eg ‘the baby earsplittingly wailed’). Despite all that I found it to be an engrossing and enjoyable genre-bender with an intriguing take on cosmic karma. 3.5 stars.
October 4, 2023
As a youngster, one of my favourite short stories and one that has stuck with me 40 years later is Ray Bradbury’s “The Sound of Thunder” (available in PDF at the link below).
https://web1.nbed.nb.ca/sites/ASD-S/1...
In the story time travel is used to facilitate dinosaur hunting – the stories protagonist, travelling back on the day of a Presidential election (in which a liberal candidate defeated a right wing populist) inadvertently crushes a butterfly and returns to the present day only to find out the new President is now the populist.
I find it impossible to believe that Newman was not influenced by this story – at least indirectly – and was surprised to see no obvious acknowledgment of it.
This novel is at its basic level a time travel story of a character (Kate – a turn of the millennium liberal New Yorker) going back in time (in this case via her dreams and to late 16th Century Elizabethan London) and by her actions inadvertently triggering increasingly detrimental changes in the 21st Century – not least in a gradual change of presidents (from a left wing woman to Gore and then Bush) and into a world which starts as a mild utopia and ends very much as our present one.
And the book makes no real pretence early on of where it is going.
The Great Man Theory of History and the Butterfly Effect are both jammed incongruously into the first chapter and Kate actively muses on whether her dreams could change the fate of millions in the second chapter.
The book’s style I think is best (if perhaps a little unfairly) described as a literary version of an episode of Dr Who.
In fact more specifically a remake of Episode 180 – The Shakespeare’s Code, remade for American cable, drawing on the theory of the real life Emilia Lanier as the Dark Lady (rather than the fictional Martha Jones) and written by two sets of writers.
The first conjuring a group of quirky (to the writers - annoying to the viewers), rich, politically active liberals and the eccentric cast of characters they attract. The second working on a rewrite of David Mitchell’s “Upstart Crow” (pleasingly, although I suspect entirely inadvertently, this is acknowledged in the story) but having failed to understand the British sense of irony and that it was meant to be a comedy.
The book does have additional layers though.
Firstly as historical fiction – the Elizabethan sections do appear to have been thoroughly researched and prithees-aside some of the writing in these parts is beautiful.
Secondly as a meditation on mental illness and an examination on what it means to live with someone suffering from it. Kate is loved by those around her (in particular Ben, the other main protagonist of the second section) but they struggle with her constant struggle with reality and what appears her self-centred despair (that her actions are causing everything bad in the world, including things which they have long since accepted as normal) – in one of the strongest scenes in the novel, their tolerance for her eccentricities/illness is pushed beyond its limits as they struggle to take in 9-11.
Thirdly as a political commentary – why do we accept the state of the world and yet also believe that someone can change it. Further Kate’s bewilderment at the deterioration she witnesses every time she returns – “That can’t be a thing” she asks - is I think a clever observation on many liberals despair at the way the world has developed in the last few years: Trump, Brexit, Spurs in the CL final – “That can’t be a thing” we say to ourselves.
Fourthly as a commentary on egotism, on the quest for significance, the willingness to believe that you are important, only you can make a difference, on whether leaving a legacy is more important than anything.
Fifthly as an examination of (abusive) relationships – can we really know other people, can we change them, why do people keep trying – in another well written episode when he visits Kate in a mental hospital Ben “kept rehearsing every childish illusion: that their sex had been supernaturally good and their first months together his one real happiness; that she was kind, funny, magical, as no one else was; that if he tried hard enough, he could save her”
Overall an interesting novel – unlike Bradbury’s story I don’t think the book will particularly stay with me 40 weeks later - albeit I can imagine a future in which I may revisit it around then as a Women’s Prize contender.
https://web1.nbed.nb.ca/sites/ASD-S/1...
In the story time travel is used to facilitate dinosaur hunting – the stories protagonist, travelling back on the day of a Presidential election (in which a liberal candidate defeated a right wing populist) inadvertently crushes a butterfly and returns to the present day only to find out the new President is now the populist.
I find it impossible to believe that Newman was not influenced by this story – at least indirectly – and was surprised to see no obvious acknowledgment of it.
This novel is at its basic level a time travel story of a character (Kate – a turn of the millennium liberal New Yorker) going back in time (in this case via her dreams and to late 16th Century Elizabethan London) and by her actions inadvertently triggering increasingly detrimental changes in the 21st Century – not least in a gradual change of presidents (from a left wing woman to Gore and then Bush) and into a world which starts as a mild utopia and ends very much as our present one.
And the book makes no real pretence early on of where it is going.
The Great Man Theory of History and the Butterfly Effect are both jammed incongruously into the first chapter and Kate actively muses on whether her dreams could change the fate of millions in the second chapter.
The book’s style I think is best (if perhaps a little unfairly) described as a literary version of an episode of Dr Who.
In fact more specifically a remake of Episode 180 – The Shakespeare’s Code, remade for American cable, drawing on the theory of the real life Emilia Lanier as the Dark Lady (rather than the fictional Martha Jones) and written by two sets of writers.
The first conjuring a group of quirky (to the writers - annoying to the viewers), rich, politically active liberals and the eccentric cast of characters they attract. The second working on a rewrite of David Mitchell’s “Upstart Crow” (pleasingly, although I suspect entirely inadvertently, this is acknowledged in the story) but having failed to understand the British sense of irony and that it was meant to be a comedy.
The book does have additional layers though.
Firstly as historical fiction – the Elizabethan sections do appear to have been thoroughly researched and prithees-aside some of the writing in these parts is beautiful.
Secondly as a meditation on mental illness and an examination on what it means to live with someone suffering from it. Kate is loved by those around her (in particular Ben, the other main protagonist of the second section) but they struggle with her constant struggle with reality and what appears her self-centred despair (that her actions are causing everything bad in the world, including things which they have long since accepted as normal) – in one of the strongest scenes in the novel, their tolerance for her eccentricities/illness is pushed beyond its limits as they struggle to take in 9-11.
Thirdly as a political commentary – why do we accept the state of the world and yet also believe that someone can change it. Further Kate’s bewilderment at the deterioration she witnesses every time she returns – “That can’t be a thing” she asks - is I think a clever observation on many liberals despair at the way the world has developed in the last few years: Trump, Brexit, Spurs in the CL final – “That can’t be a thing” we say to ourselves.
Fourthly as a commentary on egotism, on the quest for significance, the willingness to believe that you are important, only you can make a difference, on whether leaving a legacy is more important than anything.
Fifthly as an examination of (abusive) relationships – can we really know other people, can we change them, why do people keep trying – in another well written episode when he visits Kate in a mental hospital Ben “kept rehearsing every childish illusion: that their sex had been supernaturally good and their first months together his one real happiness; that she was kind, funny, magical, as no one else was; that if he tried hard enough, he could save her”
Overall an interesting novel – unlike Bradbury’s story I don’t think the book will particularly stay with me 40 weeks later - albeit I can imagine a future in which I may revisit it around then as a Women’s Prize contender.
November 27, 2018
i read this via an arc from netgalley and have been thinking long and hard about how to write about it, and haven't come up with a good plan. it's hard to say anything about this book without giving it away, but let me try.
first of all, the easy part: the writing is amazing. if you have read The Country of Ice Cream Star, you already know that sandra newman is a language wizard. in this book, which is divided between present-time and in-the-past chapters, the wizardry is most prominent in the set-in-the-past chapters, while the set-in-the-present ones are beautiful, lyrical, and mind-blowingly inventive.
another easy part: the conception is amazing. the idea behind it. it will make you think a lot -- what it means, is it plausible, what is going on -- while being quite simply a page turner.
i confess i'm a bit of a sandra newman groupie. i follow her on twitter, this miraculous mediaverse in which you can talk daily to your favorite writers and, if you are nice and they are nice, they answer. on twitter she is just as explosively inventive as she is in her books.
but this book, man, this book is rigorous. it's got all its philosophy worked out. there's no slippage (unlike in Ice Cream Star, a fabulous book with an ending that leaves you panting for a sequel).
and there is a lot to check, because there is a massive amount, in this book, of world building. let me just say that this kinda slender book manages to jump, fairly effortlessly, between the 16th century, the future, and then, uncannily, as the chapters progress, more and more the present.
the link between all of these worlds is kate, a mad prophetess. in fact she is not mad at all but, like all prophets, is inevitably condemned to be read as mad. the cast of characters, in all timelines, is fantastic and their evolution in relation to the timelines they are in is flawless.
there is also quite a bit of laughing cuz sandra newman is really funny. what stayed with me most, though, was the sheer beauty of it all and, sadly, the bleak representation of the mess we are making of this world.
oh, and this is also a love story. did i say this is a love story? this is a terrific love story between many lovers and, also, the same lovers again and again.
first of all, the easy part: the writing is amazing. if you have read The Country of Ice Cream Star, you already know that sandra newman is a language wizard. in this book, which is divided between present-time and in-the-past chapters, the wizardry is most prominent in the set-in-the-past chapters, while the set-in-the-present ones are beautiful, lyrical, and mind-blowingly inventive.
another easy part: the conception is amazing. the idea behind it. it will make you think a lot -- what it means, is it plausible, what is going on -- while being quite simply a page turner.
i confess i'm a bit of a sandra newman groupie. i follow her on twitter, this miraculous mediaverse in which you can talk daily to your favorite writers and, if you are nice and they are nice, they answer. on twitter she is just as explosively inventive as she is in her books.
but this book, man, this book is rigorous. it's got all its philosophy worked out. there's no slippage (unlike in Ice Cream Star, a fabulous book with an ending that leaves you panting for a sequel).
and there is a lot to check, because there is a massive amount, in this book, of world building. let me just say that this kinda slender book manages to jump, fairly effortlessly, between the 16th century, the future, and then, uncannily, as the chapters progress, more and more the present.
the link between all of these worlds is kate, a mad prophetess. in fact she is not mad at all but, like all prophets, is inevitably condemned to be read as mad. the cast of characters, in all timelines, is fantastic and their evolution in relation to the timelines they are in is flawless.
there is also quite a bit of laughing cuz sandra newman is really funny. what stayed with me most, though, was the sheer beauty of it all and, sadly, the bleak representation of the mess we are making of this world.
oh, and this is also a love story. did i say this is a love story? this is a terrific love story between many lovers and, also, the same lovers again and again.
January 29, 2019
Reading Sandra Newman’s
The Heavens
felt like reading the first draft of a novel with a very bold premise, which is what kept me going when I knew I should have stopped. I’m not talking about the editing, because the writer couldn’t help adverbising every freaking verb and poorly-chosen adjective, or couldn’t decide what kind of information and from whose PoV goes into those brackets. Although, seriously: “Ben thought as he torpidly watched,” “the cat meowed peevishly,” “the cat meowed again protestingly” (sic.), “the company equably laughed,” “stores with dirty plastic signs that were bullyingly ugly,” “Kate said fatalistically.”
But that’s not my main issue…
I should have stopped when I realized whom Kate/Emilia was trying to save by dreaming/going back in the past, again when the historical part felt like a parody of the Elizabethan era, yet again when mental illness is used to make sense of a weak plot, and finally when talk of time travel was being introduced. It became too much! Nevertheless, I persisted.
I’m an English and literary theory major and this novel contained as many storytelling “NO, NOs” as I could think of. I’m not saying that writers should follow every rule in the book, only have a clear idea where the story is going. Or a story, period! Beginning, middle, and end, in whichever order they prefer. Even though I was intrigued by its premise, I can’t ignore the fact that I didn’t enjoy the way the story was delivered.
1.5 stars
* Thanks to NetGalley & Grove Press for the opportunity to read a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. *
But that’s not my main issue…
I should have stopped when I realized whom Kate/Emilia was trying to save by dreaming/going back in the past, again when the historical part felt like a parody of the Elizabethan era, yet again when mental illness is used to make sense of a weak plot, and finally when talk of time travel was being introduced. It became too much! Nevertheless, I persisted.
I’m an English and literary theory major and this novel contained as many storytelling “NO, NOs” as I could think of. I’m not saying that writers should follow every rule in the book, only have a clear idea where the story is going. Or a story, period! Beginning, middle, and end, in whichever order they prefer. Even though I was intrigued by its premise, I can’t ignore the fact that I didn’t enjoy the way the story was delivered.
1.5 stars
* Thanks to NetGalley & Grove Press for the opportunity to read a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. *
March 27, 2020
Messy plot and surprisingly tedious.
February 28, 2019
An homage to Le Guin's Lathe of Heaven crossed with Palmer's Version Control, carried aloft by Newman's fluidity with language and genre. So really I never had any chance of not falling hard.
The perfect last words subvert your understanding of what this book is about. For one who feels like the last several years have been a dream, that this timeline is all wrong, this story shows a path out. It felt like therapy.
Somehow my favorite books are always poorly rated in this app. So if you, like me, find your favorites in those books that others don't quite get - if you like feeling like a book was written for you but maybe not everyone you know - join me here.
The perfect last words subvert your understanding of what this book is about. For one who feels like the last several years have been a dream, that this timeline is all wrong, this story shows a path out. It felt like therapy.
Somehow my favorite books are always poorly rated in this app. So if you, like me, find your favorites in those books that others don't quite get - if you like feeling like a book was written for you but maybe not everyone you know - join me here.
May 10, 2019
Sandra Newman’s “The Heavens” begins like a quaint modern love story about two individuals named Kate and Ben who meet at a “rich girl’s party” in New York City in the year 2000, but it steadily turns into a highly innovative and entertaining meditation on time, psychology, memory, reality, ambition and destiny. When Kate goes to sleep she finds her mind has melded with that of Emilia Lanier, the Elizabethan-era poet, member of the minor gentry and the person some scholars speculate to be the “Dark Lady” referenced in Shakespeare’s more “bawdy” sequence of sonnets. And when Kate wakes again she finds the world around her has changed in small and large ways. She becomes convinced she must manipulate history to try to save the world and change the present for the better – even though she runs the risk of making things worse. This is such a surprising and playful tale as well as being one which asks us to seriously question our relationship to history. It’s also a totally original and beguiling time travel fantasy.
Read my full review of The Heavens by Sandra Newman on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of The Heavens by Sandra Newman on LonesomeReader
August 10, 2019
The Heavens begins in 2000 in an idealised New York, a female progressive on her way to the Presidency, narrated from the perspective of Ben who meets and falls in love with Kate:
"New York City, so everyone was interning at a Condé Nast publication or a television program or the UN. Everyone a little in love with each other; the year 2000 in the affluent West.
...
For the rest of his life, he would remember it: that intoxicated moment not only of first love but of universal hope, that summer when Chen swept the presidential primaries on a wave of utopian fervor, when carbon emissions had radically declined and the Jerusalem peace accords had been signed and the United Nations surpassed its millennium goals for eradicating poverty, when it felt as if everything might work out."
But The Heavens is Kate's story not Ben's. And Kate has an unusual trait. When she dreams, particularly at times of heightened emotions such as when she is in love, she revisits the same dream, one she inhabits and which seems to her less a dream than an alternate reality: in this reality it is 1593, in Elizabethan England and she is Emilia, not Kate. More specifically , who is one of the candidates scholars have identified as Shakespeare's Dark Lady.
In Kate's idealised 2000 Shakespeare is unknown. But in her dream/alternative reality, she meets and befriend a young playwright Will and feels compelled to help him in his fledgling career, feeling that somehow that will make the world a better place and avoid another nightmare she has, this time of an apocalyptic future, from becoming reality.
But each time she wakes, she finds her present day world changed, and largely for the worse: Chen is replaced by President Gore then President Bush, although Shakespeare becomes more and more of a known figure:
"She would wake to find the world was changed, as if her dreams were actual visits to the past, and the things she did there altered history. There, she’d met another time traveler, a man who was a minor Elizabethan playwright. They both had visions of a future apocalypse: a burnt, empty city in a world that was dead. She’d been trying to avert that doom, but now she was certain she was making things worse. She hoped the poet could change this picture, but she didn’t really see what he would do. He would write a world-changing play? It seemed like grasping at straws."
The Heavens can't make up its mind - or more charitably allows the reader to decide - whether this is time-travelling science fiction (Terminator is explicitly referenced) or actually a documentation of mental illness. The more moving and convincing parts of the novel are the second of these, as Ben, and Kate's family and other friends, struggle to cope with someone who insists that when she went to bed the previous night someone else was President, and who is convinced that she is responsible for the changes.
“It’s like the movie Terminator 2. Like the worst version of the Skynet future, a planet of machines where all the people are dead. But in my dream, the machines didn’t kill the people. We killed each other in a nuclear war. And the machines don’t inherit Earth. They rust and fall apart. Then Earth becomes completely uninhabitable. It doesn’t even have bacteria. It has no life.”
“So not very similar.”
“Well, it’s an apocalypse.”
“And does anybody send a robot assassin back in time to prevent the apocalypse?”
“I wish,” said Kate. “That would be great. But what happens is, they send me.”
It was rather less effective for this reader in terms of the rather corny science fiction plot, which combines both the butterfly effect and 'great man' theory of history.
And ones liking for the book will also depend rather on one's affinity for the two separate sections of narrative - even ignoring the link between them - a rather kooky version of modern New York life with crazee characters (e.g. an ex-mail order bride from the Ukraine with an aversion to clothes) and a 'Prithee, Sirrah' pastiche of Shakespearian Britain.
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.
Overall - something of a hotpotch but entertainingly done. 2.5 stars rounded to 3.
"New York City, so everyone was interning at a Condé Nast publication or a television program or the UN. Everyone a little in love with each other; the year 2000 in the affluent West.
...
For the rest of his life, he would remember it: that intoxicated moment not only of first love but of universal hope, that summer when Chen swept the presidential primaries on a wave of utopian fervor, when carbon emissions had radically declined and the Jerusalem peace accords had been signed and the United Nations surpassed its millennium goals for eradicating poverty, when it felt as if everything might work out."
But The Heavens is Kate's story not Ben's. And Kate has an unusual trait. When she dreams, particularly at times of heightened emotions such as when she is in love, she revisits the same dream, one she inhabits and which seems to her less a dream than an alternate reality: in this reality it is 1593, in Elizabethan England and she is Emilia, not Kate. More specifically , who is one of the candidates scholars have identified as Shakespeare's Dark Lady.
In Kate's idealised 2000 Shakespeare is unknown. But in her dream/alternative reality, she meets and befriend a young playwright Will and feels compelled to help him in his fledgling career, feeling that somehow that will make the world a better place and avoid another nightmare she has, this time of an apocalyptic future, from becoming reality.
But each time she wakes, she finds her present day world changed, and largely for the worse: Chen is replaced by President Gore then President Bush, although Shakespeare becomes more and more of a known figure:
"She would wake to find the world was changed, as if her dreams were actual visits to the past, and the things she did there altered history. There, she’d met another time traveler, a man who was a minor Elizabethan playwright. They both had visions of a future apocalypse: a burnt, empty city in a world that was dead. She’d been trying to avert that doom, but now she was certain she was making things worse. She hoped the poet could change this picture, but she didn’t really see what he would do. He would write a world-changing play? It seemed like grasping at straws."
The Heavens can't make up its mind - or more charitably allows the reader to decide - whether this is time-travelling science fiction (Terminator is explicitly referenced) or actually a documentation of mental illness. The more moving and convincing parts of the novel are the second of these, as Ben, and Kate's family and other friends, struggle to cope with someone who insists that when she went to bed the previous night someone else was President, and who is convinced that she is responsible for the changes.
“It’s like the movie Terminator 2. Like the worst version of the Skynet future, a planet of machines where all the people are dead. But in my dream, the machines didn’t kill the people. We killed each other in a nuclear war. And the machines don’t inherit Earth. They rust and fall apart. Then Earth becomes completely uninhabitable. It doesn’t even have bacteria. It has no life.”
“So not very similar.”
“Well, it’s an apocalypse.”
“And does anybody send a robot assassin back in time to prevent the apocalypse?”
“I wish,” said Kate. “That would be great. But what happens is, they send me.”
It was rather less effective for this reader in terms of the rather corny science fiction plot, which combines both the butterfly effect and 'great man' theory of history.
And ones liking for the book will also depend rather on one's affinity for the two separate sections of narrative - even ignoring the link between them - a rather kooky version of modern New York life with crazee characters (e.g. an ex-mail order bride from the Ukraine with an aversion to clothes) and a 'Prithee, Sirrah' pastiche of Shakespearian Britain.
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.
Overall - something of a hotpotch but entertainingly done. 2.5 stars rounded to 3.
July 6, 2019
Three stars? Get off the fence, Peter! But the thing is I don't really know how to rate this book. I've never read anything like it and it's hard to say how much I truly enjoyed it.
It's quite a tricky plot to summarise, but here goes. The couple at its centre meet at a party in New York, one night in the year 2000. Ben, a PhD student, immediately falls in love with Kate, even though her friends warn him about her eccentricities. They begin a whirlwind romance and move in together. The strangest of Kate's proclivities soon becomes apparent. Since childhood she's had dreams in which she travels back to 1593 and lives as Emilia, a pregnant woman from a family of musicians. Whenever Kate wakes up, she finds that the world has been altered in some way, and she eventually believes that she has the power to change the future. As the dreams get more intense, Kate's mental state becomes more confused and it puts a huge strain on her relationship with Ben.
Newman's writing style is confident and often poetic. Time travelling plots can be a difficult beast to grapple with, but she alternates seamlessly between the past and the present. She also has a knack for conjuring a striking image. The flighty Kate is reluctant to work as jobs give her existential panic: "She could do them for a while, but it felt like darning socks in a burning building." In one of her dreams she meets a gentleman "with an extravagantly lacy ruff and cuffs that made him look as if he were frothing over."
So what's it really about? The butterfly effect? The power of love? Mental illness? Maybe all of these things. I'm not sure where it lost me, probably around the middle when the dreams and their consequences became increasingly outlandish. But I think my main problem with the story is that I didn't believe in the romance between Ben and Kate. I've seen other reviews voice their acclaim for the evolution of their relationship, but I was never rooting for it to survive and I found some of Ben's actions particularly hard to swallow. So The Heavens is a mixed bag for me overall - I wish I cared more about the characters, but the ingenuity and originality of its twisting narrative deserves lots of praise.
It's quite a tricky plot to summarise, but here goes. The couple at its centre meet at a party in New York, one night in the year 2000. Ben, a PhD student, immediately falls in love with Kate, even though her friends warn him about her eccentricities. They begin a whirlwind romance and move in together. The strangest of Kate's proclivities soon becomes apparent. Since childhood she's had dreams in which she travels back to 1593 and lives as Emilia, a pregnant woman from a family of musicians. Whenever Kate wakes up, she finds that the world has been altered in some way, and she eventually believes that she has the power to change the future. As the dreams get more intense, Kate's mental state becomes more confused and it puts a huge strain on her relationship with Ben.
Newman's writing style is confident and often poetic. Time travelling plots can be a difficult beast to grapple with, but she alternates seamlessly between the past and the present. She also has a knack for conjuring a striking image. The flighty Kate is reluctant to work as jobs give her existential panic: "She could do them for a while, but it felt like darning socks in a burning building." In one of her dreams she meets a gentleman "with an extravagantly lacy ruff and cuffs that made him look as if he were frothing over."
So what's it really about? The butterfly effect? The power of love? Mental illness? Maybe all of these things. I'm not sure where it lost me, probably around the middle when the dreams and their consequences became increasingly outlandish. But I think my main problem with the story is that I didn't believe in the romance between Ben and Kate. I've seen other reviews voice their acclaim for the evolution of their relationship, but I was never rooting for it to survive and I found some of Ben's actions particularly hard to swallow. So The Heavens is a mixed bag for me overall - I wish I cared more about the characters, but the ingenuity and originality of its twisting narrative deserves lots of praise.
June 20, 2021
Whittling down the plot of “The Heavens” to its bare bones makes it sound incomprehensible, if not downright silly. However, I’ll try to do it justice with as few spoilers as possible.
The novel’s “present” is set in New York around the year 2000. Except it’s not the city as we know it, but one which is different in subtle yet significant ways. A female, environmentalist President has been elected, it’s “the first year with no war at all” and there’s a general sense of utopian optimism. In other words, all’s right with the world.
It’s certainly all right with Ben’s world. He’s just fallen in love with Kate and can’t believe his luck. Kate is smart and beautiful. She’s exotic, describing herself as Hungarian-Turkish-Persian, three romantic, impractical strains, three peoples who had thrown away their empires. She moves within a glamorous set of friends who welcome Ben into their fold.
Soon, Ben learns that Kate has a strange recurring dream in which she visits an alternative reality. As her relationship with Ben gets stronger, the dream also becomes more defined and we realise that, in her sleep, she is travelling to late 16th century England, and experiencing it as (the historical) Emilia Lanier. Lanier was a poet and musician, mistress to the cousin of Elizabeth I, and wife of court musician Alfonso Lanier. Emilia is also sometimes touted as the “Dark Lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
On each return to the “present”, Kate notices that the world has changed from the way she left it, and often for the worse – this sets her on a mission to change the past, in the hope of creating a better future. But the second part of the novel also presents us with a radically – and tragically – different possibility, namely that this whole time-travel thing is all in Kate’s mind, even though the novel’s post-apocalyptic ending leaves it up to us to figure out what is really happening between the book’s pages.
This is a quirky novel with an appropriately quirky set of characters. Ben and Kate/Emilia are the protagonists, but Kate’s set of friends provide an eccentric supporting cast, adroitly reflected in the court circles frequented by Emilia. It might not be a perfect comparison, but “The Heavens” reminded me somewhat of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas – firstly in the idea of different eras impinging on each other but, more importantly, in its mixture of genres. “The Heavens” is part romance, part historical fiction/alternative history, part science-fiction, part fantasy/speculative fiction with a touch of magical realism. On one level, it can also be read as an expression of millennial angst – there’s an important scene which recreates the 9/11 attacks, making it the third novel I’ve read in the past few months which in some way or another references a defining event of recent history. (Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation and R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries)
There’s similar variety in the style – which shifts from realistic narration to poetic description, from tragedy to comedy and back to something-in-between.
If it’s eclectic in its influences and style, “The Heavens” is equally varied in the subjects it addresses. Now whilst I don’t mind genre-hopping one bit and actually love a novel which breaks barriers between genres, the boring part in me still tries to find an “anchoring” theme, subject or message. In this regard, “The Heavens” is more like a colourful butterfly which flits impulsively from one theme to the next. The novel could be an ideal book club choice as it provides plenty of discussion material. Just a few of the questions raised:
· How does the past affect the present?
· Does history repeat itself?
· Is the idea that we can affect the future merely an illusion?
· On a larger scale, can politics really change the world for the better?
· Is there a place for utopia and ideals?
· Can art...music...literature... change the world?
· Can love change the world?
· What does it mean to be happy and can one be happy when the world’s in a bad state?
· What does it mean to live with mental health problems or with a person with (possibly) mental health issues?
They’re not easy questions and the novel does not provide easy answers, which might be frustrating for some readers and quite the contrary for others. What’s more impressive is that these themes are addressed (or, at least, raised) in a novel which often displays a light, playful touch.
P.S. Head to http://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/201... for music to listen to whilst reading the book...
The novel’s “present” is set in New York around the year 2000. Except it’s not the city as we know it, but one which is different in subtle yet significant ways. A female, environmentalist President has been elected, it’s “the first year with no war at all” and there’s a general sense of utopian optimism. In other words, all’s right with the world.
It’s certainly all right with Ben’s world. He’s just fallen in love with Kate and can’t believe his luck. Kate is smart and beautiful. She’s exotic, describing herself as Hungarian-Turkish-Persian, three romantic, impractical strains, three peoples who had thrown away their empires. She moves within a glamorous set of friends who welcome Ben into their fold.
Soon, Ben learns that Kate has a strange recurring dream in which she visits an alternative reality. As her relationship with Ben gets stronger, the dream also becomes more defined and we realise that, in her sleep, she is travelling to late 16th century England, and experiencing it as (the historical) Emilia Lanier. Lanier was a poet and musician, mistress to the cousin of Elizabeth I, and wife of court musician Alfonso Lanier. Emilia is also sometimes touted as the “Dark Lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
On each return to the “present”, Kate notices that the world has changed from the way she left it, and often for the worse – this sets her on a mission to change the past, in the hope of creating a better future. But the second part of the novel also presents us with a radically – and tragically – different possibility, namely that this whole time-travel thing is all in Kate’s mind, even though the novel’s post-apocalyptic ending leaves it up to us to figure out what is really happening between the book’s pages.
This is a quirky novel with an appropriately quirky set of characters. Ben and Kate/Emilia are the protagonists, but Kate’s set of friends provide an eccentric supporting cast, adroitly reflected in the court circles frequented by Emilia. It might not be a perfect comparison, but “The Heavens” reminded me somewhat of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas – firstly in the idea of different eras impinging on each other but, more importantly, in its mixture of genres. “The Heavens” is part romance, part historical fiction/alternative history, part science-fiction, part fantasy/speculative fiction with a touch of magical realism. On one level, it can also be read as an expression of millennial angst – there’s an important scene which recreates the 9/11 attacks, making it the third novel I’ve read in the past few months which in some way or another references a defining event of recent history. (Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation and R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries)
There’s similar variety in the style – which shifts from realistic narration to poetic description, from tragedy to comedy and back to something-in-between.
If it’s eclectic in its influences and style, “The Heavens” is equally varied in the subjects it addresses. Now whilst I don’t mind genre-hopping one bit and actually love a novel which breaks barriers between genres, the boring part in me still tries to find an “anchoring” theme, subject or message. In this regard, “The Heavens” is more like a colourful butterfly which flits impulsively from one theme to the next. The novel could be an ideal book club choice as it provides plenty of discussion material. Just a few of the questions raised:
· How does the past affect the present?
· Does history repeat itself?
· Is the idea that we can affect the future merely an illusion?
· On a larger scale, can politics really change the world for the better?
· Is there a place for utopia and ideals?
· Can art...music...literature... change the world?
· Can love change the world?
· What does it mean to be happy and can one be happy when the world’s in a bad state?
· What does it mean to live with mental health problems or with a person with (possibly) mental health issues?
They’re not easy questions and the novel does not provide easy answers, which might be frustrating for some readers and quite the contrary for others. What’s more impressive is that these themes are addressed (or, at least, raised) in a novel which often displays a light, playful touch.
P.S. Head to http://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/201... for music to listen to whilst reading the book...
February 18, 2020
I didn't know Newman had a new book out! And the premise looks super intriguing!
Her The Country of Ice Cream Star is a postapocalyptic masterpiece that doesn't get nearly enough love, and How Not to Write a Novel made me laugh for days.
Her The Country of Ice Cream Star is a postapocalyptic masterpiece that doesn't get nearly enough love, and How Not to Write a Novel made me laugh for days.
October 20, 2018
I’ve been trying to come up with words to say about this delightfully weird, dark, romantic novel about time travel or madness in a utopia or a dystopia with Shakespeare and mail order brides, this novel I nearly sped through. Then I realized I was down to 70-odd pages. I rationed those like this was the last novel. Ever. Five a night. No, five isn’t enough. Ten. Then it was over. I still can’t think of the words. I’m just thankful I get to live in the same timeline as Sandra Newman.
September 2, 2019
Within no less than four pages of starting this book I had a tremendous grin on my face that never really went away. I feel like this was somehow written just for me, words on pages specifically honed to catch just so in my brain and thrill me to bits and then strike me with the Library at Mount Char-style sadness that I'll never live the experience of reading this utter piece of work again for the first time. Five adoring stars.
July 26, 2019
I love time travel novels. This one was challenging and somewhat sad, though, because it’s not an optimistic book. Kate travels in her dreams from modern-day America to 16th century England. When she wakes, her present has changed, often in tragic ways. She tries to change the future in her dreams, but can’t seem to change the ultimate fate of the world. 3.5⭐️
December 25, 2021
This book is sad, beautiful, funny, troubling, despondent, hopeful, warm, strangely cold, a little bizarre and eerily prophetic.
It completely fucked me up.
It completely fucked me up.
July 14, 2020
Lucid dreaming, time travel, Shakespeare, madness, the choices we make, saving the world, and the transitory nature of all things.
August 14, 2022
Šta sam ja, koji moj, ovo pročitala?! Ja više ne znam da li je do mog izbora ili do Bukinih izdanja uopšte, ali ovo je prosto toliko loša knjiga, koja je zapravo i imala nekog potencijala, ali koji se izgubio negdje na pola i posle samo išao nishodnom linijom! 2⭐️, jedino zbog početka, jer sam stvarno mislila da će ovo biti nešto inovativno i posebno za čitanje, kakav je utisak i odavalo na prvih 50ak strana!
November 4, 2019
‘The Heavens’ was an unusual reading experience that defied my initial expectations. At first I found it hard to enjoy, then as it went on I liked it more and more. The ending is rather brilliant. I have complained before about novels that use dystopian and/or apocalyptic elements as scene-setting for rather uninspired romances (cf California, Gold Fame Citrus). By contrast, here romance acts as a framing device for a compelling story about parallel realities, reminding me of the wonderful Woman on the Edge of Time and The Lathe of Heaven. I withhold the fifth star because of the initially uninteresting (to me) romance, however the increasingly unsettling atmosphere and historical elements are excellent. I definitely recommend it, but will cut further discussion for the spoiler-wary.
Pessimistic as it is, I very much liked the thesis this novel has for how we’ve ended up in what seems like the darkest timeline.
Pessimistic as it is, I very much liked the thesis this novel has for how we’ve ended up in what seems like the darkest timeline.
November 2, 2021
This novel is unusually imaginative. Sandra Newman's novels tend to feature multi-layered stories within a single narrative. It's never obvious where the story is going.
At first glance, this may appear to be nothing more than a vehicle for the Butterfly Effect or even The Great Man theory, but these characters tangle in ever-increasing subplots, creating a more complex whole. The author employs deft skills as a wordsmith, and as an economist of speech.
Where most writers start strong, struggle under the weight of a sagging midpoint, and wrestle with a proper ending, this author begins in a lower gear, and suddenly accelerates just when the road ahead appears more dangerous. It's a dizzying ride you can't anticipate. And, like all great rides, you can't wait to hurry back in line, and ride again.
At first glance, this may appear to be nothing more than a vehicle for the Butterfly Effect or even The Great Man theory, but these characters tangle in ever-increasing subplots, creating a more complex whole. The author employs deft skills as a wordsmith, and as an economist of speech.
Where most writers start strong, struggle under the weight of a sagging midpoint, and wrestle with a proper ending, this author begins in a lower gear, and suddenly accelerates just when the road ahead appears more dangerous. It's a dizzying ride you can't anticipate. And, like all great rides, you can't wait to hurry back in line, and ride again.
November 24, 2019
I’m in awe of this book. All the stars.
April 16, 2019
I know, I know: in my last review, I wrote how The New Me was my favorite novel to be released so far in 2019. But now, having read The Heavens, Sandra Newman's novel has to snag that top spot. When it rains it pours! There are some great books coming out this year and I feel lucky to be reading them. The Heavens is a standout! It's a spectacular work of speculative fiction and I can't recommend it enough. It's a novel to get lost in, to live in. I loved this book so much.
Ben and Kate meet at a party in NYC in the summer of 2000. They quickly fall in love and embark on a life together. But Kate has been have a recurring dream all her life that has always felt real to her. In her dream, she's Emilia, a nobleman's mistress in Elizabethan England. Kate begins spending more and more time in the dream world. And when she wakes up she swears that details of the real world have changed, like buildings, politics, and aspects of people's lives. While Kate becomes convinced that there's a mission she must carry out as Emilia, Ben fears that the woman he loves is losing her mind.
I felt immersed in this story from the get-go; Newman hooks the reader right away. I literally couldn't stop reading it—The Heavens demands your continued attention like a wonderfully elaborate dream. Newman sets the scene and establishes the fascinating premise quickly. The pace of this book is invigorating. I was swept up by the different storylines and there are great characters in each timeline.
Everything Newman invents for the alternate universes and timelines is truly impressive. She's a writer of boundless imagination. The AU stuff is awesome. The 2000 setting we're introduced to is not quite the world we know. The changes that creep up on Kate after her dreams are scary. Newman makes you feel what it would be like to wake up in an altered world. It's a very cool and original concept of time travel.
The Heavens is peopled by a fascinating cast of diverse, quirky characters. People are characterized through amusing and interesting details. In NYC, there are many clever young people with snappy dialogue. You feel the connection between Ben and Kate immediately: the frisson of attraction, the piqued interest, the compatibility. At its heart, this is a moving love story.
Both time periods are so richly textured and colored. Newman describes things beautifully, from NYC to the Elizabethan countryside. The period feel in the Elizabethan dreams is authentic, complete with courtly speech. The Heavens contains a wealth of knowledge, about things as varied as theories of history, endangered grasses, and French poetry. It offers commentary on the state of the world. It asks, What if? It explores fate and the butterfly effect. There are switchbacks and layers upon layers.
Newman's prose is elevated. This is a book that's purely a pleasure to read. There's a swoony, romantic quality to the writing that sets the mood. I loved Newman's way of putting things, her beautiful language. She has a distinct style of sometimes using sentence fragments instead of whole sentences but having it all flow and make perfect sense. The Heavens is sophisticated and intelligent.
The Heavens is a great, big exciting story. It contains perfectly executed foreshadowing. Sometimes it's funny and at times it's desperately sad. It depicts the effects of mental illness on loved ones and on the mentally ill person themselves. The Heavens has the perfect ending, which made me cry. Even the acknowledgements made me cry (you should read them) and I couldn't stop crying. It's the kind of book where you want to thank the author for writing it.
The Heavens is such a brilliantly conceived and executed novel. It's excellent from the start and rides high the whole time. Newman conjures up worlds and lives with such vivid imagery. This book is a masterpiece and she is a brilliant writer. The Heavens will leave you breathless.
Ben and Kate meet at a party in NYC in the summer of 2000. They quickly fall in love and embark on a life together. But Kate has been have a recurring dream all her life that has always felt real to her. In her dream, she's Emilia, a nobleman's mistress in Elizabethan England. Kate begins spending more and more time in the dream world. And when she wakes up she swears that details of the real world have changed, like buildings, politics, and aspects of people's lives. While Kate becomes convinced that there's a mission she must carry out as Emilia, Ben fears that the woman he loves is losing her mind.
I felt immersed in this story from the get-go; Newman hooks the reader right away. I literally couldn't stop reading it—The Heavens demands your continued attention like a wonderfully elaborate dream. Newman sets the scene and establishes the fascinating premise quickly. The pace of this book is invigorating. I was swept up by the different storylines and there are great characters in each timeline.
Everything Newman invents for the alternate universes and timelines is truly impressive. She's a writer of boundless imagination. The AU stuff is awesome. The 2000 setting we're introduced to is not quite the world we know. The changes that creep up on Kate after her dreams are scary. Newman makes you feel what it would be like to wake up in an altered world. It's a very cool and original concept of time travel.
The Heavens is peopled by a fascinating cast of diverse, quirky characters. People are characterized through amusing and interesting details. In NYC, there are many clever young people with snappy dialogue. You feel the connection between Ben and Kate immediately: the frisson of attraction, the piqued interest, the compatibility. At its heart, this is a moving love story.
Both time periods are so richly textured and colored. Newman describes things beautifully, from NYC to the Elizabethan countryside. The period feel in the Elizabethan dreams is authentic, complete with courtly speech. The Heavens contains a wealth of knowledge, about things as varied as theories of history, endangered grasses, and French poetry. It offers commentary on the state of the world. It asks, What if? It explores fate and the butterfly effect. There are switchbacks and layers upon layers.
Newman's prose is elevated. This is a book that's purely a pleasure to read. There's a swoony, romantic quality to the writing that sets the mood. I loved Newman's way of putting things, her beautiful language. She has a distinct style of sometimes using sentence fragments instead of whole sentences but having it all flow and make perfect sense. The Heavens is sophisticated and intelligent.
The Heavens is a great, big exciting story. It contains perfectly executed foreshadowing. Sometimes it's funny and at times it's desperately sad. It depicts the effects of mental illness on loved ones and on the mentally ill person themselves. The Heavens has the perfect ending, which made me cry. Even the acknowledgements made me cry (you should read them) and I couldn't stop crying. It's the kind of book where you want to thank the author for writing it.
The Heavens is such a brilliantly conceived and executed novel. It's excellent from the start and rides high the whole time. Newman conjures up worlds and lives with such vivid imagery. This book is a masterpiece and she is a brilliant writer. The Heavens will leave you breathless.
January 9, 2020
2.5 stars, rounded up.
A work of rare literary brilliance and emotional power, The Heavens is a mesmerizing novel of love and time, of dreams and politics, that asks how we come to inhabit our world - Goodreads blurb
The blurb may be true for some readers but this was far from my experience. The time travelling vs dreams vs mental illness of the main protagonist (which seemed like about a thousand iterations, it may have in fact been more) didn't work for me at all. There are a few loose ends which left me wondering if I had totally missed entire sections of the book (maybe in a bored trance?). What happened to William Shakespeare and why did we have so much of the novel about this strange relationship and what happened with the twin towers? Was Gore really the president? These events were made out to be such integral parts of the story but then kind of fizzled. I understand that in the end there is no way to save the world by travelling back in time, in fact the last line (and this is a massive SPOILER), is indeed the blunt statement that "No, I think we could be happy, but there isn't any way to save this world". The ending seemed rushed in comparison to the minute detail in which Ben and Kate's relationship was tiringly explored for the first 90% of the book.
Again, as with many of the books I read, I need to state that there are many others, and GR friends of mine here that read this book in a completely different way and awarded high/higher praise and ratings than me. I struggled with the constant shift back and forth, and back and forth even within the 2 ?? separate timelines. It was too hard to keep track and just not captivating enough - but I got a few kilometres walking in while listening to this audiobook, so not a total loss.
A work of rare literary brilliance and emotional power, The Heavens is a mesmerizing novel of love and time, of dreams and politics, that asks how we come to inhabit our world - Goodreads blurb
The blurb may be true for some readers but this was far from my experience. The time travelling vs dreams vs mental illness of the main protagonist (which seemed like about a thousand iterations, it may have in fact been more) didn't work for me at all. There are a few loose ends which left me wondering if I had totally missed entire sections of the book (maybe in a bored trance?). What happened to William Shakespeare and why did we have so much of the novel about this strange relationship and what happened with the twin towers? Was Gore really the president? These events were made out to be such integral parts of the story but then kind of fizzled. I understand that in the end there is no way to save the world by travelling back in time, in fact the last line (and this is a massive SPOILER), is indeed the blunt statement that "No, I think we could be happy, but there isn't any way to save this world". The ending seemed rushed in comparison to the minute detail in which Ben and Kate's relationship was tiringly explored for the first 90% of the book.
Again, as with many of the books I read, I need to state that there are many others, and GR friends of mine here that read this book in a completely different way and awarded high/higher praise and ratings than me. I struggled with the constant shift back and forth, and back and forth even within the 2 ?? separate timelines. It was too hard to keep track and just not captivating enough - but I got a few kilometres walking in while listening to this audiobook, so not a total loss.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 10, 2019
Like all the best speculative fiction, The Heavens is a mix of the thought provoking and the entertaining. The fact that it is also beautifully written and frequently funny (in the early chapters at least) is just a bonus.
I usually hate dream sequences. They are often nothing but boring distractions from the plot and as soon as I come upon a dream in a novel I feel a nearly irrepressible urge to skim. But in The Heavens the dreams are the meat of the book, because they aren't really dreams at all, but time travel. The Heavens explores the same ideas that time travel novels generally explore: how do individuals affect history? Can small actions reverberate over time until they develop into major consequences? And it probes these issues with thoughtfulness and intelligence. The Heavens feels fresh and original, while also reminding me of one of my favorite science fiction novels, The Lathe of Heaven, another story where dreams lead to massive changes in reality.
Kate, the time travelling protagonist, decides that she is on a mission to make the world better by tinkering with things in the past (mostly by saving one specific individual from death and then helping him with his career), but her efforts always seem to make the future worse and she struggles to find a way to break the pattern. Meanwhile, in the present day, her friends and family begin to worry about her sanity.
Kate and Ben are great characters, fully realized and sympathetic. I also enjoyed the cast of supporting characters, which includes a number of mail order wives who have escaped their lousy husbands and a rich activist who seems to pour herself into every liberal cause.
For a while I found myself taking issue with the way that some of Kate's changes affected the future. It didn't make sense to me that trying to help a poet become famous would somehow lead to the creation of the atom bomb, for example. But Newman irons these issues out and I put the book down as a very satisfied customer.
I usually hate dream sequences. They are often nothing but boring distractions from the plot and as soon as I come upon a dream in a novel I feel a nearly irrepressible urge to skim. But in The Heavens the dreams are the meat of the book, because they aren't really dreams at all, but time travel. The Heavens explores the same ideas that time travel novels generally explore: how do individuals affect history? Can small actions reverberate over time until they develop into major consequences? And it probes these issues with thoughtfulness and intelligence. The Heavens feels fresh and original, while also reminding me of one of my favorite science fiction novels, The Lathe of Heaven, another story where dreams lead to massive changes in reality.
Kate, the time travelling protagonist, decides that she is on a mission to make the world better by tinkering with things in the past (mostly by saving one specific individual from death and then helping him with his career), but her efforts always seem to make the future worse and she struggles to find a way to break the pattern. Meanwhile, in the present day, her friends and family begin to worry about her sanity.
Kate and Ben are great characters, fully realized and sympathetic. I also enjoyed the cast of supporting characters, which includes a number of mail order wives who have escaped their lousy husbands and a rich activist who seems to pour herself into every liberal cause.
For a while I found myself taking issue with the way that some of Kate's changes affected the future. It didn't make sense to me that trying to help a poet become famous would somehow lead to the creation of the atom bomb, for example. But Newman irons these issues out and I put the book down as a very satisfied customer.
April 8, 2019
When I heard this novel was about time travel and had gotten rave reviews from critics I was “on board”. What self professed Outlander fan wouldn’t want to read it?
Let’s just say I was profoundly disappointed.
First, Newman’s strength lies in her knowledge of and writing about England during the time of the Renaissance….that and she can write some luminous prose. But I found her characterizations weak, her plot unfathomable and her time travel device had more holes in it than a piece of Swiss cheese.
The protagonist Kate, a young woman in her twenties, comes across with the innocence of a pre-pubescent girl. For example, what young woman in the 21st century U.S. has never heard of William Shakespeare? Her relationship with Ben, her primary romantic interest, is poorly developed and reads like a bad YA novel. What does he see in her? We are told he has “rescue” fantasies.
When Kate time travels and then returns to present day she apparently forgets everything she knew about her current life. She is diagnosed “schizophrenic” but comes off more like amnesiac. Also, she projects her experiences onto others and creates alternate histories for them. Since I’m no psychiatrist I can’t say if that is typical of schizophrenics but it doesn’t fit with what I know about the illness.
During the course of the novel, Kate meets two other time travelers. One is the aforementioned William Shakespeare and the other is someone who lives in the future and can warn her about events to come.
A tragic event occurs which apparently puts Kate on the road to recovery and she magically becomes a high functioning person.
By the end of the novel, I threw up my hands in despair. Are we to believe the time travel narrative or the mental health narrative? And either way, things just don’t add up.
Let’s just say I was profoundly disappointed.
First, Newman’s strength lies in her knowledge of and writing about England during the time of the Renaissance….that and she can write some luminous prose. But I found her characterizations weak, her plot unfathomable and her time travel device had more holes in it than a piece of Swiss cheese.
The protagonist Kate, a young woman in her twenties, comes across with the innocence of a pre-pubescent girl. For example, what young woman in the 21st century U.S. has never heard of William Shakespeare? Her relationship with Ben, her primary romantic interest, is poorly developed and reads like a bad YA novel. What does he see in her? We are told he has “rescue” fantasies.
When Kate time travels and then returns to present day she apparently forgets everything she knew about her current life. She is diagnosed “schizophrenic” but comes off more like amnesiac. Also, she projects her experiences onto others and creates alternate histories for them. Since I’m no psychiatrist I can’t say if that is typical of schizophrenics but it doesn’t fit with what I know about the illness.
During the course of the novel, Kate meets two other time travelers. One is the aforementioned William Shakespeare and the other is someone who lives in the future and can warn her about events to come.
A tragic event occurs which apparently puts Kate on the road to recovery and she magically becomes a high functioning person.
By the end of the novel, I threw up my hands in despair. Are we to believe the time travel narrative or the mental health narrative? And either way, things just don’t add up.
July 2, 2018
I received an email from Granta Books offering me the chance to read an early copy of this book based, they said, on my "thoughtful and perceptive" reviews of other books they have published. Feeling slightly smug, I downloaded a copy even though it didn’t really sound like the kind of book I would normally read.
Having now completed it, I can say for certain that it is NOT the kind of book I would normally read. But the good news is that doesn’t mean I regret it.
The difficulty with reviewing this book is in deciding how much to say about the plot. The novel stands or falls by the plot and by the reader's experience as each part is uncovered. In truth, it is a completely preposterous plot involving time travel, alternative realities, Shakespeare’s "dark lady" (to whom he addressed several of his sonnets and with one of the main historical candidates for the role playing an important part in this novel) and the end of the world. It is set in the past, several versions of the present, and the far future. It is crazy. I don’t suppose it does any harm to tell you as much as Granta Books told me in the email I received as that is clearly what the publisher regards as acceptable to know before you start reading:
"The Heavens is a powerful, moving, and compelling act of the imagination. It tells the story of a group of friends in an alternative, utopian New York at the turn of the century, and the young woman who’s carried backwards in time in her sleep, to a distant time and place where her every action affects the idyllic world her waking self lives in.
It’s a story of love, friendship, madness and time travel, and the lengths we go to to forge a better world."
I could say a lot more and discuss the points where I made the connections, but that would spoil the book for those who then read it. It is best, I think, to go in cold and let it unfold before you.
It is the "act of the imagination" that is key. To enjoy this book, you have to suspend all thoughts of rationality and just go with the flow. If you do that, it becomes good fun. Totally unbelievable, but good fun. But then, I don’t think believability is the goal. I would say a movie version is the goal. Everything about the book feels cinematic: it felt to me as I read it as if the author had the film version in mind as she wrote (I wonder who she was picturing in the lead roles?). It may just be that this is the way Newman writes (I haven’t read any of her other books), but it is a very visual book.
I want to give this 3.5 stars, but that is not an option. However, I don’t feel that I can round that up to 4 stars, so it has to be rounded down to 3.
Having now completed it, I can say for certain that it is NOT the kind of book I would normally read. But the good news is that doesn’t mean I regret it.
The difficulty with reviewing this book is in deciding how much to say about the plot. The novel stands or falls by the plot and by the reader's experience as each part is uncovered. In truth, it is a completely preposterous plot involving time travel, alternative realities, Shakespeare’s "dark lady" (to whom he addressed several of his sonnets and with one of the main historical candidates for the role playing an important part in this novel) and the end of the world. It is set in the past, several versions of the present, and the far future. It is crazy. I don’t suppose it does any harm to tell you as much as Granta Books told me in the email I received as that is clearly what the publisher regards as acceptable to know before you start reading:
"The Heavens is a powerful, moving, and compelling act of the imagination. It tells the story of a group of friends in an alternative, utopian New York at the turn of the century, and the young woman who’s carried backwards in time in her sleep, to a distant time and place where her every action affects the idyllic world her waking self lives in.
It’s a story of love, friendship, madness and time travel, and the lengths we go to to forge a better world."
I could say a lot more and discuss the points where I made the connections, but that would spoil the book for those who then read it. It is best, I think, to go in cold and let it unfold before you.
It is the "act of the imagination" that is key. To enjoy this book, you have to suspend all thoughts of rationality and just go with the flow. If you do that, it becomes good fun. Totally unbelievable, but good fun. But then, I don’t think believability is the goal. I would say a movie version is the goal. Everything about the book feels cinematic: it felt to me as I read it as if the author had the film version in mind as she wrote (I wonder who she was picturing in the lead roles?). It may just be that this is the way Newman writes (I haven’t read any of her other books), but it is a very visual book.
I want to give this 3.5 stars, but that is not an option. However, I don’t feel that I can round that up to 4 stars, so it has to be rounded down to 3.
May 15, 2019
Stories about dreams, love and time have always been a real delight to me and so The Heavens was a much anticipated release of this year. I'm new to Sandra Newman and I'm glad I decided to try. Surely not an ordinary story and definitely not an ordinary writing. Don't get me wrong though, the writing style is pretty placid, easy to understand and comprehend. It is the narrative that surprised me beyond wits.
Kate and Ben meet at a party and fall in love. Things could have been pretty normal if not for her recurring dreams of another life that she's apparently living as Emilia. As the lines between dreams and reality starts to blur, their love is put to test. Two starkly different lives but one woman. You get the complexity.
As things tend to unravel leading to a few shockers and an unnerving ending, you'd be thrilled enough to keep your mind at it
even long after you've finished reading it. Cutting to the chase, it has been a 4.5 🌟 read for me, though I have to admit that it is not for everyone. If you're expecting a conventional fantasy then let me warn you, this is not it. But if you're ready to pick up something out of the box then please be my guest ❤️
Kate and Ben meet at a party and fall in love. Things could have been pretty normal if not for her recurring dreams of another life that she's apparently living as Emilia. As the lines between dreams and reality starts to blur, their love is put to test. Two starkly different lives but one woman. You get the complexity.
As things tend to unravel leading to a few shockers and an unnerving ending, you'd be thrilled enough to keep your mind at it
even long after you've finished reading it. Cutting to the chase, it has been a 4.5 🌟 read for me, though I have to admit that it is not for everyone. If you're expecting a conventional fantasy then let me warn you, this is not it. But if you're ready to pick up something out of the box then please be my guest ❤️
May 26, 2019
I'm thinking it's probably best to not try to figure this all out; to not push too hard for coherence. It's an alternative history - time travel - romance - climate fiction - doomsday novel. I thought of Time Traveler's Wife, French Lieutenant's Woman, Life after Life . . . but it's still something else. I enjoyed the quasi-contemporary New York City setting(s) and just when the quirky characters and clubby atmosphere start to grate on my nerves, things move increasingly off-kilter . . . - until it all sort of stops making sense. In an interesting way - quite surprising, even. I wasn't even particularly invested in the historical scenes and I didn't enjoy the iconoclastic portrayal of the surprise character? . I don't know if the novel works, but it's thought-provoking.
January 26, 2019
https://wordnerdy.blogspot.com/2019/0...
In this surprising and compelling novel, it's the year 2000, and NYC 20-somethings Ben and Kate meet at a party thrown by a wealthy friend, and fall in love. But Kate has a recurring dream where she is actually Emilia, a woman living in England in the 1590s (actually a real person!) and whenever she wakes up from the dream, things are slightly different in the present. But Ben is sure she's mentally ill. Newman's previous novel was The Country of Ice Cream Star, and so I should have expected things to get a little intense, but this is heartbreaking in an entirely different way. I think I loved this? But damn. A.
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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on February 12th.
In this surprising and compelling novel, it's the year 2000, and NYC 20-somethings Ben and Kate meet at a party thrown by a wealthy friend, and fall in love. But Kate has a recurring dream where she is actually Emilia, a woman living in England in the 1590s (actually a real person!) and whenever she wakes up from the dream, things are slightly different in the present. But Ben is sure she's mentally ill. Newman's previous novel was The Country of Ice Cream Star, and so I should have expected things to get a little intense, but this is heartbreaking in an entirely different way. I think I loved this? But damn. A.
__
A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on February 12th.
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