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The Heavens
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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
New York, late summer, 2000. A party in a spacious Manhattan apartment, hosted by a wealthy young activist. Dozens of idealistic twenty-somethings have impassioned conversations over takeout dumpling ...more
New York, late summer, 2000. A party in a spacious Manhattan apartment, hosted by a wealthy young activist. Dozens of idealistic twenty-somethings have impassioned conversations over takeout dumpling ...more
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M. Gem
Sex mentioned, but not explicitly. There is some language and at least one violent scene, but nothing excessive.
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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 convince
...more
Jun 12, 2019
Marchpane
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
2019-releases,
arc-from-netgalley
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 w ...more
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 w ...more
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
The Heavens is such a difficult book to review, as it spans several genres and is rather different to anything I’ve read before. The basic synopsis is centred around Kate and Ben, who meet in the year 2000 and fall in love. This is a 2000 that’s like our own, yet different in many subtle yet significant ways. It soon becomes apparent that Kate is just as ‘different’, as she explains that she often dreams of a previous life in Eliza ...more
The Heavens is such a difficult book to review, as it spans several genres and is rather different to anything I’ve read before. The basic synopsis is centred around Kate and Ben, who meet in the year 2000 and fall in love. This is a 2000 that’s like our own, yet different in many subtle yet significant ways. It soon becomes apparent that Kate is just as ‘different’, as she explains that she often dreams of a previous life in Eliza ...more
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
...more
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 r ...more
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 r ...more
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 ...more
"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 ...more
Mar 27, 2020
Alice Lippart
rated it
did not like it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
read-in-2020
Messy plot and surprisingly tedious.
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 o ...more
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 o ...more
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 ...more
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 ...more
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 s ...more
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 s ...more
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, ...more
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, ...more
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 “D
...more
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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. ...more
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. ...more
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⭐️
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 ...more
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 ...more
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 thi ...more
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 thi ...more
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.
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 che ...more
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 che ...more
This was a story that I had a very difficult time engaging with. The writing didn’t work for me as it felt disjointed and jumped around too much. My favorite reads tend to evoke strong emotional reactions through their character development or plot. The Heavens lacked that emotional impact. I couldn’t relate to the characters - Kate in particular -which made it challenging to care about her. When I first requested this book, I was expecting a different sort of read in which the main character wa
...more
Lucid dreaming, time travel, Shakespeare, madness, the choices we make, saving the world, and the transitory nature of all things.
‘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
...more
I read and loved Sandra's The Country of Ice Cream Star. From the setting to the characters to the intricate and refreshing dialouge... it was brilliantly executed.
Having read the description for The Heavens, I knew it was going to be a completely different animal altogether, but it sounded promising nonetheless - in an alternate version of NYC, a young woman dreams she is transported back in time and befriends a young William Shakespeare. Each time she awakens, she picks up on small, though no ...more
Having read the description for The Heavens, I knew it was going to be a completely different animal altogether, but it sounded promising nonetheless - in an alternate version of NYC, a young woman dreams she is transported back in time and befriends a young William Shakespeare. Each time she awakens, she picks up on small, though no ...more
More truly 3.5*
There is no denying the poise of Sandra Newman’s The Heavens. She tells this story of time travel, mental illness and apocalypse with a spare confidence that I couldn’t help but admire. The writing reflects the style and tone of the story, sometimes fragmented, sometimes fluent. It was thoughtful about the human capacity for change and about the great men theory of history.
But it’s dreamlike quality meant that I found it difficult to believe in the reality of the central characte ...more
There is no denying the poise of Sandra Newman’s The Heavens. She tells this story of time travel, mental illness and apocalypse with a spare confidence that I couldn’t help but admire. The writing reflects the style and tone of the story, sometimes fragmented, sometimes fluent. It was thoughtful about the human capacity for change and about the great men theory of history.
But it’s dreamlike quality meant that I found it difficult to believe in the reality of the central characte ...more
This is a hard book to review without giving away not so much the plot as my interpretation of it... (view spoiler) which, from the reviews, rather differs from the way others have read it.
On the surface, this is a book about time travel, saving the world, and dreaming an alternative life as Emilia Lanier (erroneously, again, represented as Shakespeare's 'dark lady' and inspiration for various play characters - in rea ...more
On the surface, this is a book about time travel, saving the world, and dreaming an alternative life as Emilia Lanier (erroneously, again, represented as Shakespeare's 'dark lady' and inspiration for various play characters - in rea ...more
The third attempt finally seemed to get me going. But not for long. This book just didn't make sense to me.
Ben meets Kate at a rich girls party. They fall in love and pretty soon are living together.
Kate has dreams that take her back to 1593 plague ridden London, where she has an important role to fulfill in her Italian family.
Her daytime in New York is occupied by her night time dreams. Is this going anywhere other than now and then?
I wanted to understand the story but I felt like an outside ...more
Ben meets Kate at a rich girls party. They fall in love and pretty soon are living together.
Kate has dreams that take her back to 1593 plague ridden London, where she has an important role to fulfill in her Italian family.
Her daytime in New York is occupied by her night time dreams. Is this going anywhere other than now and then?
I wanted to understand the story but I felt like an outside ...more
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.
...more
I don't really know how I feel about this novel, but ultimately, I don't feel much of anything. I think the novel suffered due to its length, leaving both the present and dream timelines feeling thin. I wanted a better understanding and exploration of both worlds. I understand that Newman was probably trying to go for a dreamy feeling, and to leave things up to the imagination, but she didn't give me enough as a reader to really chew on. I also didn't find myself invested in the core relationshi
...more
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
...more
Feb 13, 2019
Janelle Janson
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
2019,
contemporary-literary-fiction
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