Heaven

A short and arresting novel about teenage bullying. Take Lord of the Flies and transport to 1990s Japan and you have Heaven. It is less the gratuitous violence perpetuated upon the hapless and unnamed narrator — he fears he may have to eat dog feces; his head is used as a human football — and more the overriding nihilistic worldview embraced (either consciously or unconsciously, by all the characters). The narrator is befriended by a girl in his class, also subject to bullying — you know the relationship won't endure almost from the outset — and together they visit an art gallery in the school holidays. This day of shared happiness assumes almost a mythic (and never-to-be-repeated) status, as unattainable as the concept of heaven. Elsewhere, one of the bullies asserts that ‘if there is a hell, we're in it... and if there's a heaven, we're already there.’ It's sort of hard to disagree with such an assertion. The reader is also forced to confront the role of (absent) parents, whether violent responses are the actions of the strong or the weak, and how might victims best respond to damaging behaviour. There is no relenting in this work; the reader is fully immersed. The ending to Heaven provides a worthwhile twist, with redemption unexpectedly offered to the narrator, even if he — but not the reader — has already seemingly long forgotten his former school colleague and their summer outing. Eight out of ten.

By Mieko Kawakami