The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu | Book Review

Stephanos is a lonely shopkeeper living in Washington D.C. He fled the turmoil in Ethiopia almost two decades ago. He has no drive or ambition and is simply content to drift along from day to day. He's not going anywhere with his life and he's not doing anything to change that. After almost two decades in America, the only people he can call on are his Uncle and two friends - Kenneth and Joe. Kenneth and Joe are also immigrants and as a trio their companionship is heartwarming. Their American story began with dreams of grandeur and hopes of a brighter future but life has settled into a routine over the years. They have achieved some of their goals (mostly Kenneth and Joe) but no one has achieved the level of success they imagined. They still have those dreams but their optimism has waned. The loneliness in their lives can be felt and I found it captivating. Along comes Judith and Naomi to Stephanos neighborhood. Judith is a single caucasian mom and Naomi is her eleven years old African American daughter. They soon become a light in Stephanos' otherwise miserable daily existence and he slowly grows to depend their presence to brighten up his day. On the outside Stephanos is a skinny, lonely man who doesn't have his life on track but it's because he's broken on the inside and it's taking everything he can muster to keep it together and get from day to day.

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears is Dinaw Mengestu's debut novel and it's fantastic. In 2014 I read his third novel All Our Names and I was not impressed but there was something about him that caught my attention. In that book review I wrote:

"I'll buy and review Dinaw's first and second novels [...] One or both of them had to have been mightily impressive enough to get him noticed and I really want to see him at his best. All Our Names is not Dinaw Mengestu at his best. It can't be." 

So I ordered his first two novels and I started by reading this one. I was riveted with this story from the very beginning. I took it in slowly, marking sentences with my colored pens and leaving page marker post-its on almost every page. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears is life on two hundred and twenty eight pages. The plot, the narration, everything, seemed so effortless and it was all sooo good. I was hooked. I did not want to put it down. I read it from 7pm on Monday till 5am on Tuesday and I would have finished it if I had been able to fight off sleep. This is that debut novel that pulls its author to the front of the literary pack. I love this novel sooo much but I hated the way it ended. I had been rooting for Stephanos all through the novel in-spite of his flaws and I kept hoping he would shake off his lethargy somehow and grab life by the horns. All of that goodwill went down the drain when I read page 227, the page before the last page of the novel. I hated the choice he made on that page especially because it was one more addition onto the pile of choices he had made that I did not approve of. It was maddening. If someone reaches out to you on this lonely planet, especially someone who genuinely likes you and you like that person back, you ought to reach right back. For a man his age, I hated his hesitancy and his lack of confidence even though I understood it. So I finished the last page of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears with a sudden pulsating headache because I was so mad at Stephanos. What is wrong with you???? In the great words of Tyra Banks:

And then I picked up another novel hoping to get this one off my mind.

I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it. Fantastic job Dinaw! Great job! I'm glad I followed through on my hunch that his third novel wasn't his best. I've got one more novel of his to read, his second book How to Read Air. I'm on a journey to discover Mengestu and I'm really hoping that All Our Names is his worst novel thus far.
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READ:
All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu - My Thoughts

[Book cover image via Amazon; Tyra Banks gif via NewNowNext]