The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
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Small-town secrets and the people who keep them
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.
As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us. Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.
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The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store felt like a messy, contrived ramble. There are countless characters who are given extensive backstories that all tie into the main plot somehow. Instead of giving things a realistic or fleshed out feel, it made the plot feel like a Rube Goldberg machine of confidences.
At the center of much of this plot was some sort of water conspiracy that I never really got my head around. I'm sure it all lines up somehow, but I just couldn't convince myself to get invested in wells and pipes and city water.
Perhaps the most infuriating parts of this book were the admittedly very occasional rants about modern day America. Out of nowhere in a book set in 1936, the author starts lecturing us on the evils of cell phones. In general, I think this book tries to hard to be about important things, but it's just too broad to go into meaningful depth.
I've just completed a most beautiful literary journey. It's as though I myself am now returning from the 1930s town of Pottstown, Pennsylvania. What a world James McBride has created! Winner of many accolades including the National Book Award, this book is full of the most delightfully fleshed out characters- each and every one. McBride does not hesitate to give his readers a quick side story about just about all of his cast of characters. It works precisely because his writing is lyric and lovely. There is xenophobia here-and nationalism- all as a precursor to World War II- but there is also human kindness and generosity and the understanding that we are all the same. Our wants and fears and dreams- our humanity binds us together. It is heartbreaking and heartwarming. This writer is a master storyteller. If character driven novels are your thing- this book is for you.
This novel is so widely lauded, yet TBH it took me at least a couple hundred pages or so to understand why. The story telling, while rich and colorful (language included,) meanders as the omniscient narrator shares the backstories of the diverse cast of characters. Although the novel starts with a mysterious discovery, it takes a while for the plot to blossom. When it does open up and the connections among the characters and plotlines are realized - the effect is spellbinding and deeply satisfying. Certain vivid characters, especially the beautifully crafted Monkey Pants, belong in the canon of fictional individuals who will forever remain with the reader. Grateful that I stayed through this story as I will not soon forget its journey.
