The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

McBride has a way of creating a realistic feeling neighborhood full of flawed and complicated people. Some of them make mistakes, but are still trying. Others don't notice the mistakes they are making and don't consider them mistakes. It makes for a heart wrenching story because you feel like you know these people and what they are suffering.

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.

The story starts with the discovery of a skeleton and a mezuzah in a well at a construction site in 1972. How did that skeleton get there? The story takes the long way around to tell us that. The setting is mostly in the 1920s and 1930s in Pottstown, Pennsylvania in the neighborhood of Chicken Hill. Chicken Hill's residents are mostly Black and Jewish immigrants. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is a central location the characters frequent.
The characters are varied and many. And their names are great (Dodo, Monkey Pants, Fatty, Big Soap, Paper, Snooks, Miggy). The characters in the story are so well developed that you really get to know them.
Throughout the story the characters face many social issues, such as racism, antisemitism, prejudice, disability. We also see the characters support, care for, and protect one another. The residents of Chicken Hill mostly stick together and look out for each other.
Amongst all the serious issues and injustice, there is plenty of humor and good.
I very much enjoyed this book; could hardly put it down.

Well, that was unexpectedly sweet. Tender and moving and heartwarming and, okay, a little preachy and heavyhanded, with the noble principled characters just a tad too much so and the despicable ones likewise, but sometimes we need role models to aspire to and mustachioed villains to hiss at. And aside from those very few extremes—only four characters—the rest of the cast is richly, complexly, interestingly human.

The story meanders gracefully through a lovely landscape of people around a smallish community. The relationships between everyone can be hard to follow at times, so this is a good book to focus on over a few days, not a book to put aside and read sporadically. I do encourage you to do so. McBride writes with gentleness and heart, on themes of injustice, strength, growth, and redemption, and I think this book will stay with me. Or at least the first ninety percent: the are two unnecessarily convoluted heist subplots near the end that didn't really work for me. Maybe you'll find that part fun, and if not, just skip a few paragraphs here and there but I hope you'll finish.

In my opinion this is the best book that I have read this year. Definitely deserved the National Book Award. A wonderful story of what life was like for blacks and Jews in the mid 1930s in Pennsylvania. It is a story of acceptance and of family as well as both overt and covert racism as well as discrimination and the characters in the story rise above it all.

4/5 - This was a really good story. There was a complex range of characters that was fun to follow but sometimes confusing. The narration was top notch which made it easier to follow.

I really wanted to like this book but unfortunately it felt like a chore to finish. The story itself is good and I love how the author was able to paint such a clear picture of the disparity in privilege between races and between physically impaired and not individuals during this time. I also love the way the author wrote about each person and their layers of challenge even for those who seemingly had all the privilege. It showed the complexity of human nature and experience, and gave insight and understanding to individuals that otherwise could have simply been labeled as “bad” people. This was really wonderfully done.

With that being said, the HUGE drawback in the experience of this book is the shear number of characters, subplots and jumping around that made it incredibly challenging to keep everything straight. I can see the importance of introducing so many different characters with different backgrounds as a window into perspective, it just unfortunately also comes with the drawback of a more challenging read. I was constantly looking up the characters online and trying to keep them straight (many online resources noted over 100 characters throughout the book). I even found myself reading chapter summaries online to make sure I didn't miss anything while trying to keep up with all of the intermingling subplots.

All in all the story and its beautifully written perspectives was great, I personally just didn't find it enjoyable to keep up with.

3.5
Took me a while to finish but has such incredible stories. Had some slow parts hence the rating. Otherwise, a beautiful story!

** 4.5 Stars **

This story was an emotional rollercoaster that left me stunned. It opens with a mystery where skeletal remains are discovered in Pottstown, Pennsylvania where digging has begun for a new housing development. To uncover the truth of who the skeleton is and how it got there leads us to the impoverished neighborhood of Chicken Hill where Jews, Blacks, and European immigrants reside. A community rich with secrets bound by an insatiable desire to survive.

It took me a bit to get settled within this story because it was a bit slow in the beginning and there are a lot of characters with detailed backstories. I confess I did wonder if this was necessary but after completing the book and seeing how everything came together in the end I realized that it was.

I enjoyed the overall theme of community and how despite the differences and challenges they faced they were still able to band together to help their fellow neighbor.

This is my first James McBride and it won't be my last!

This could have been a great story, but it was not. It was long and I had a difficult time staying engaged. Parts of it were interesting and other parts annoyed me. I think it could have been broken into at least two separate stories.

Went with the audio for this, Dominic Hoffman did a fine job.

I read this one for a book club. It was not my pick, and most definitely not something I would have picked up on my own. And while that is the reason why I’m in the book club, I’m just not really sure how to rate it because of that.

This read like there was no editorial say to tell the author that the story did not need 555 supporting characters. There’s actually so many characters, and so many seeming endless backstories, that I genuinely do not remember any character names other than DoDo.

The novel is about Chicken Hill and it’s residents. They are primarily Jewish and black, which is mostly what the story is about, however literally every single character gets a name and a backstory. For me it drowned out everything else, and I didn’t think there was any discernible through line for the entire novel. Not really sure about this one, but I don’t think I’d suggest it.

It was okay. To be honest, I'm confused on who's even the main character I should follow. It felt like there were so many things happening in between that I lost the main plot.

James McBride is a really talented writer when it comes to characters. Everyone feels authentic and grounded in reality.

And he's funny! What's not to love.

What an amazing voice this author has!! I can't believe how real his Jewish and Black characters sound.

This is a fantastic tale that revolves around a deaf orphan, but he barely has a part. It's really the story of a several communities, all outside of White society which must rely on each other, no matter how much they dislike that idea.

The tale starts with Moshe's music theater, recounting all the great acts he books in the early 1920. Moshe is a Jewish immigrant who ends up living on Chicken Hill, a neighborhood of mostly Black inhabitants. Most of the Jewish residents left, but Moshe's wife, Chona, insists they stay. She runs the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store for mostly Black clientele.

Moshe employs Nate to keep his theater running. Nate has a checkered past that he keeps from everyone, even his wife Addie. They take in a deaf/mute nephew, but turn the child over to Chona for safe keeping when the state authorities find out the child is with Nate & Addie.

The crooked doctor, the scheming characters Fatty, Big Soap, and Paper, the Jewish temple's water problem, Bullis the egg man, the Pennhurst Sanitorium, and a loan shark, all have a hand in making this complex tale come to life. I couldn't it put down.

outstanding

Close but not quite 4 stars. Would have been an immensely better book if 1) there were way less characters and 2) it was about 50-100 pages shorter. There was just so much extra detail & character building that I don't feel like was necessary or made an impact on the story itself

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.

4.5

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.

“Light is only possible through dialogue between cultures, not through rejection of one or the other.”

James McBride has created a beautifully-written story about people of different cultures coming together to save the future of a 12 year old deaf boy. McBride creates a vivid portrait of a diverse community in 1936 Pennsylvania. While the plot of saving the young boy is ever present, this book is more a character study of individuals from different backgrounds and how those individuals fit or do not fit in the America of the 1930s.

The main plot involves a 12 year old deaf boy who has been orphaned. The state of Pennsylvania wants to put him in a mental institution, even though he is not mentally disabled. Members of the Pottstown community, both Jewish and African-American, conspire together to hide the boy, Dodo, from the state authorities. The book has many other small side plots that create a portrait of the lives of the different individuals of Pottstown.

Some readers will find the pacing of this book to be too slow, but I thoroughly enjoyed the time the author takes to reveal the personalities and background of the many characters in Pottstown. The narration often meanders away from the main plot and main characters, which allows the reader to get a complete picture of the community. The many characters and their stories do not distract from the main plot; they enhance it.

The social commentary in this book centers around race, religion, and acceptance. McBride makes many salient points about these topics that stick with the reader upon completion of the book. While at times I felt the commentary to be a bit “preachy,” I found that overall the points are relevant and impactful.

I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy character-driven narratives with strong, universally relevant themes. It is truly worth the time to savor it.

3.5 I liked a lot of the topics covered in this book, but, while it had its good moments, I was bored most of the time. It took me a long time to get through this book. The last third of the book was engaging, but the lead up to that was too slowly paced. I'm very glad I read it, but I didn't enjoy my reading experience with it.

A well-written novel that also feels like it veers off track at times with too much attempt at character development, as odd as that might sound. It's a bit unclear for most of the story what the main plot/focus/driver of the tale is, just like the book opens with something curious and intriguing and then barely addresses it until a last-pages explanation of what actually happened. In between, there are a few major milestones and when they do come about they are some of the best parts of the book, but they seemed too far and few between. Yet, once the threads begin to be resolved in the last 100 pages, the pace and the quality gives it a strong finish.

This is a sweeping, beautiful, charming, terrifying, heart-breaking, classic-McBride novel. I was listening, and found that I had to stop because I was getting too upset as I anticipated a distressing turn. It's a fabulous listen, though, and I highly recommend that for anyone who enjoys an audio book. It would be great for a car trip. I didn't find this novel as funny and fun as his last (Deacon King Kong), which I loved. This one has more sadness, but his ability to capture culture, place, time, and the mixing of all of that plus racial/ethnic diversity, is a gift to the reader (or listener).

James McBride always amuses me with his characters and the situations that they get themselves into and out of. The stories are sad and happy. I am also fascinated by his use of dialect and idiom.

With The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has accomplished quite the magic trick. He has written an action-packed, character-driven gem filled with unique and relatable characters much like he did with Deacon King Kong. And, much like Deacon King Kong, while the narrative drives hard at all that divides us around race and class, the trick comes when he ultimately circles all that unites us and makes us human. The insights around Jewish life and customs and black life and customs at the time this story takes place are vivid and incredible. I want to know Chona. I want to go to Moshe's theater. I want to visit Fatty's jook joint. I want to walk up Chicken Hill and see it all for myself and thanks to McBride, I almost can.