Reading for book club. Almost skipped it because the titled sounded similar to "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" (ugh). But the book has nothing to do with heaven nor is it religious in any way.

Now I wish I had skipped it. The writing is good but it amounts to nothing of substance padded with sad incidents that teach nothing and the minutes of the protagonist's day which are entirely wasted - as was my time reading this. ( )

Kurze Inhaltsangabe
Was ist Glück? Ein Gefühl von Heimat, Freundschaft, Familie, Liebe? Es sind Geschichten, die den Äthiopier Sepha Stephanos in der neuen, noch immer fremden Heimat am Leben halten - die Romane, mit denen er in seinem kleinen Laden den Tag verbringt, die Erzählungen seiner Freunde, Afrikaner wie er, die Erinnerungen an das Land, das er verlassen hat. Seit Sepha vor siebzehn Jahren fliehen musste, hat er in den USA keine Wurzeln geschlagen. Er hat den Kampf beinahe aufgegeben, als er neue Nachbarn bekommt. Die Freundschaft zu dem klugen, lesehungrigen Mädchen Naomi bringt plötzlich Leben in Sephas Alltag, die Liebe zu ihrer Mutter Judith, einer weißen Professorin, schenkt ihm die Hoffnung, dass es doch noch so etwas wie Glück für ihn geben könnte. In seinem Debüt erzählt der junge äthiopisch-amerikanische Autor Dinaw Mengestu von einem Schicksal, wie es in den Zeiten der globalen Flüchtlingsströme alltäglich ist - von Wurzellosigkeit, Sehnsucht und dem Funken Hoffnung, der immer wieder aufblitzt. ( )

It was a treat to read a novel set in the very neighborhood where I live (Logan Circle in Washington, DC), and to receive a fictionalized retelling of some of the gentrification stories that occurred not long before I moved here in 2011. The protagonist is a striving immigrant who burns out on running his neighborhood bodega in the face of isolation and wistfulness, and whose new neighbors bring him a temporary reprieve. As you can imagine, this is not a light read, and overall I think the main characters all had to contend with very hard lives. But the arc of the plot does go interesting places, and makes DC into the only place where these events could occur; it just ends too abruptly. ( )

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears was published in 2007 and its events take place in the late 1980s, but it registered with me as something I wanted to read when the NEA chose it as a "Big Read" book a few months back. In light of President Trumps's recent outrageous comments about immigrants from certain parts of the world, it could not be more timely, and its focus on gentrification and tensions between different populations in Washington, D.C. has further relevance to me as someone who lives in the D.C. area. Also, I had read Cutting for Stone a couple of months ago, and the two make nice bookends, so to speak, if you're interested in Ethiopia, which I am.

Anyway, BESIDES all of that, it is a great book! Mengestu does a lovely job pacing Sepha's story, and showing the reader the many angles of his, and his associates, lives. I even found echoes of themes I've encountered repeatedly in Irish-American literature of the divided nature of immigrant experience. When one's heart is always or often in a different place from one's body, life takes on a wistful tone. Newcomers to this (or probably any) country can see things about it and its people that long-timers often don't, and these things are useful for us to contemplate. When the critique comes in the guise of a fully-developed fictional universe grounded in an actual place and time, it is easier (for me, anyway) to hear and understand than if I were presented with a bullet-pointed screed, but I was likely to be sympathetic from the outset. Although this is probably the most well-known of Dinaw Mengestu's books, and I'm glad I started with it, I now look forward to reading his others. ( )

My third book by Mengestu - while I really liked it, it didn't move me as much as his others. ( )