Reviews with content warning for Excrement - Heaven

Wow this book made me so uncomfortable. Heed the content warnings! There were some interesting philosophical questions brought up, and I like how Kawakami writes characters who are children.

Content Warnings

yuyuv's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

cviii's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

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conspystery's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

I’m conflicted about this book. It’s deceptive in how shallow it appears, especially towards the beginning; the writing style is subdued and polite almost to the point of clinicality, and the main character’s plight seems painfully simple. But it’s so much more than that. Kojima’s character arc is particularly fascinating, and so are her impacts on the narrator-- she’s presented sympathetically and ironically at once in her ideas about how best to deal with bullying. Momose is her narrative foil, the embodiment of the opposite extreme of these ideas. Heaven dives deep into the philosophy of bullying, and neither of the two main ways it’s presented are particularly appealing; Kojima is too willing to accept needless suffering, and Momose is too willing to fall into nihilism and hopelessness to care about anything, let alone other people.

I think this book’s point is to balance these ideas about pain, to emphasize the importance of understanding that some suffering is out of our control while also asserting morality wherever it can be applied and standing up against needless pain when possible. It notes its own false dichotomy with how the main character responds to the ideas he’s shown. The way it makes this point is a bit meandering at times, with lots of scenes which feel like they compound the issues in the novel far past its main theme, and often deeply disturbing to read in its detail. Yet there are genuinely beautiful moments in this book as well, and the simple but precise writing highlights them in contrast with their darker, more uncomfortable counterparts. Overall, I liked what this book had to say about the importance of balance, and I also enjoyed the uncompromisingly sublime scenes (like at the very end of the novel.) The discomfort of the rest of the book was necessary to an extent, but some of it-- especially the scenes which were not explicitly, directly connected to the furthering of the philosophical content of the novel-- was a bit much for me.

Content Warnings

valeiar's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Content Warnings

ye_li's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Content Warnings

cantfindmybookmark's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

I gave this book a 5 star review on but I’m still not sure how I feel about it.

On its surface this is a story of a friendship forged in trauma and the perils that arise from that. The story is narrated by a young boy who is brutally bullied by his classmates and follows his developing friendship with Kojima, a girl in his class who is also constantly bullied. There are very brutal and graphic scenes of children inflicting violence on other children that were sometimes hard to read, so definitely proceed with caution and check the trigger warnings. I don’t think those were the primary takeaway of the book however. Kawakami uses these scenes to explore different moral ideologies on the meaning of life and how those can be used to address trauma. The book explores the meaning of human relationships, familial love, power dynamics, ableism, and classism.

The book is beautifully written and very hard to put down. It’s also so, so heartbreaking. Kawakami has such a gift for creating these characters that are so realistic and heartbreaking that by the end of the novel you just want to give them a hug. I know I will be thinking about these characters for a while. I hope they are ok.

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