The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

One of my perpetual critiques of American fiction is its hyper-focus on the individual, usually within dysfunctional family systems and always isolated from broader community networks and political systems. Have we lost the capacity to know ourselves in relationship to one another? Artists mirror our world as it is, but we also have a responsibility to imagine our world as it could be. Contemporary novelists could, if we choose, shine the spotlight on our interconnections.

There's no main character in HEAVEN AND EARTH GROCERY STORE. Instead, McBride depicts the community as a whole--the poor hill and wealthier town, the white… show more.

James McBride is one of America’s most outstanding novelists. In this book, his most recent work, he illuminates a time in our history when large numbers of African Americans and Jews lived side by side in poor neighborhoods without friction. And McBride manages to find humor throughout the story, softening the edges of what might become in the hands of a lesser writer an angry and unpleasant experience for the reader.

Up to the 1970s. there was a long and strong history of cooperation and support between Blacks and Jews in the US, especially in Civil Rights, based to a large degree on a shared set of experiences. This forms the background for this book, the experience of people living in the margins of Pottsville PA. McBride writes vivid portraits of real three-dimensional people struggling to live as well as possible under the burdens of systemic and personal discrimination. As a reader, I was invested in the characters, and through them, in this life, and the catharsis that came with the… show more.

McBride takes us on a deep dive into a quirky, colorful, and ramshackle neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African-Americans, on the border of a hostile world of whites, battle each other and sometimes bond while facing grim and life-threatening choices. In a plot at turns intricate, frightening, poignant, and even comic, McBride managed to leave me feeling that he’d just given me a great warm hug.

Throw two "different" communities together. Add quirky but sympathetic characters. They all bond to pursue an injustice. And a quiet reminder that friends come in all shapes, sizes and colors!

James McBride puts us in the center of a small, diverse Pennsylvania town with the Jewish-owned Heaven and Earth Grocery store as its center. McBride makes each character come to life with a rich backstory that stands both on its own and integrates with others to make a rich tapestry of love, death, kidnapping, and survival.

McBride artfully shares the experience of Jews and Blacks in early twentieth-century America, their barriers and the grit and determination needed to survive. I loved the love story of Moshe and Chona. The triumph of Dodo and Monkey Pants, and the humanity of a… show more.

I loved learning about Jewish settlers and how they assimilated into American life.

It was complex, even confusing at times, but it came together beautifully in the end. The setting and characters were unique to me and I enjoy reading something out of the ordinary.

I found McBride’s novel a wild ride, full of humor, unexpected twists, and a dazzling array of quirky characters. Set in Chicken Hill, a neighborhood on the proverbial “other side of the tracks,” the residents––Blacks, Jews, Italians, the disabled, and other assorted folks––come to depend on each other. I admire how he treats all, except the bigots, with deep respect and love, notwithstanding their failings or moral flaws. After all, life is complicated.

McBride captures each of their individual dialects and rhythms of speech. So many characters! But every single one turns out to be necessary, because in the end… show more.

At just under 500 pages, this barely qualifies as a big, fat book, however the complexity of the plot, the characters - heroic in their striving and endurance - the rich setting, and the beautiful, and sometimes stabbing, simplicity of McBride’s prose met my standards and gave me an unforgettable read.

Simply put, I loved it and cried as I read the beautiful, fully earned and realized ending.