If There Are Any Heavens: A Memoir

by Nicholas Montemarano

Written with visceral urgency in the earliest days of grief, If There Are Any Heavens resists it is a memoir, a poem, a mournful but loving song. On January 6, 2021, at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in America, while the U.S. Capitol is under attack, Nicholas Montemarano drives six hundred miles to see his mother, who is hospitalized with COVID pneumonia and in a critical state. For ten days he lives in a hotel minutes from the hospital, alternating between hope and helplessness. This is the story of those ten days. It is the story of the pandemic told through the intimate prism of one family’s loss.   Written with visceral urgency in the earliest days of grief, If There Are Any Heavens resists it is a memoir, a poem, a mournful but loving song. Its form asks readers to slow down and breathe between each broken line. At other moments, a chorus of voices―anti-maskers, COVID-deniers, and doctors―causes the reader to become breathless. It is an almost real-time account of the anxiety, uncertainty, and sorrow brought on by this pandemic. It is also, finally, a devastating homage to a family’s love in a time of great loss.   Now, and many years from now, when people want to understand the personal cost of the COVID-19 pandemic, they will turn to this intimate and spare elegy from a son to his mother.

Genres: Memoir, Poetry, Nonfiction

168 pages, Hardcover

Published July 19, 2022

About the author

Nicholas Montemarano's most recent novel, The Senator's Children, was published by Tin House Books. He is the author of two previous novels and a short story collection. His first memoir, If There Are Any Heavens, was published in 2022. He has received a Pushcart Prize and an NEA fellowship. He grew up in Queens and now lives in Lancaster, PA, where he is the Alumni Professor of Creative Writing and Belles Lettres at Franklin & Marshall College.

Reviews

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gut wrenching poems of the pandemic.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

What can you say about a book like this? The publisher's description really captures it:

"Written with visceral urgency in the earliest days of grief, If There Are Any Heavens resists categorization: it is a memoir, a poem, a mournful but loving song ... It is an almost real-time account of the anxiety, uncertainty, and sorrow brought on by this pandemic. It is also, finally, a devastating homage to a family’s love in a time of great loss."

I grabbed my review copy and started reading last night and read it straight through. It is spare and yet emotional, immediate and yet ethereal, mundane and yet profound. Its power comes from capturing the powerful emotions and yet surrealism of the pandemic, the question "Is this really happening?" echoes throughout. It contrasts the helpless feeling of losing a loved one with the anger and denial of others but not in a heavy handed way.

This is an important work for those who did not lose a loved one or experience that aspect of the pandemic to read, to get a glimpse into that world and hopefully gain understanding and empathy. Truly a literary wrestling with historic and yet deeply personal events.

[Hunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

"one of the nurses
listening to us
said when you're with your mother
you'll find the right words
or maybe they'll find you"
How lucky I am
that these words
found me
found us.

[Bri (semi-hiatus) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not really many other ways to describe this memoir that reads like a beautiful elegy apart from heartbreaking. The way the author wrote passing thoughts, worries, and interactions was visceral in the feeling of powerlessness that comes from grief.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

A memoir about surviving the covid19 pandemic (and losing someone they loved), this book by a writer who has contributed to DoubleTake and Zoetrope (both magazines that I loved) and is told entirely in verse. Before you write it off, Montemarano is highly effective (even within the form of verse) in relaying the emotions and sorrows that his family faced and is an effective storyteller. There is something to be said for a book with one section that are his Google search phrases in verse over difficult times spent in waiting rooms, at the beside, and at a hotel adjacent to the Indiana hospital. The lists are put into verse, everything from hymns he would choose to other end of life preparations for his family members to drug names to minimize pain like remdesivir. Every month, I pick a book that is unique from my normal genres, and this was the September book. (4.8-5.0/5.0 stars)

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have one. —

E. E. CUMMINGS

Soul wrenching. This happened to so many. Most of them could not be with their loved ones so this felt discordant. My younger cousin died without her family around her, alone. Unaware. As someone who has sat and held and touched my mom as she died as well as many strangers in my work, this felt very true. Important for a record of the pain of this pandemic.

[Jaimee Barnhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most poignant, heartbreaking and beautiful synopses of the pandemic and what it is like to lose a parent. Cannot recommend this one enough, particularly to the anti-vaxxers in your life. So sad and beautiful.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the early days of 2021, the author was dealing with his mother's health issues as she was Covid positive and in the hospital. He recorded his thoughts and actions during those days in a hybrid poetry/memoir.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is excellent. My father in law died of Covid a year after the author’s mother and this book expressed in words so many things I could not say about that experience but felt. It was both hard to read and impossible to stop reading.

[Donna Busch Embray · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a profoundly beautiful memoir. It’s deeply moving and heartbreaking, and will stay with me a long time.

[Carolin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this in one sitting— damn i’m teary eyed.

[Mark Olowinski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gut wrenching and beautiful. Takes a little over an hour to read.

[Anna V]

so much more relatable than i anticipated. i will always love this variety of poetry

[Deandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I flew through this book of (not) poems in one day. Heart breaking and beautiful.