Open, Heaven

November 1, 2024

Award-winning poet and memoirist Hewitt (Tongues of Fire; All Down Darkness Wide) makes his fiction debut with a novel about sexual awakening set in a remote village in northern England. The novel traces the lives of two teenage boys--James, sheltered, shy, and wishful, and Luke, abandoned, wounded, a bit older, and charismatic--across one transformational year. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2024 Library Journal

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2025
Twenty years later, an Irish man revisits his hometown, and his first love. In the prologue of Irish poet Hewitt's debut novel, set in 2022, narrator James Legh has an insight: "Every time I looked into a lover's eyes--even, I think, my husband's eyes--I wanted to see Luke's eyes, green and urgent, holding me." He decides to return to Thornmere, where he grew up and where, at the age of 16, he fell in love with a boy who was staying on a farm that was one of the stops on the early morning milk run, his first job. James is a deeply awkward and lonely boy, and coming out to his parents and classmates has only isolated him further. In addition to economic struggles, his parents have another hardship: James's 5-year-old brother, Eddie--an adorable character, perfectly depicted--has a serious chronic illness that causes frequent, terrifying seizures. Over the next few months, James' adolescent crush on Luke will completely consume him, leading to sublime tortures and tortuous sublimes and, finally, a critical crossroads of loyalty. Or, as James puts it, "I had come to find love, its vision, its company, to be changed by it, set free into its passionate balance, knowing that it would deplete me as much as it sustained, that it would torture me as much as it made life, the thing it threw into agony, worth living." This is a poet's novel, with as much nature writing as action and dialogue; Wordsworth meets Justin Torres in its aching intensity and passionate descriptions. Here is James regarding Luke as he thumbs through a porn mag: "I watched him, trying to trace any flicker of emotion or intent across his face, and all the green and golden light of the trees was washing over him, the leaves a lush blur behind him. Occasionally, a breeze would life and sway a branch, and make a lovely sighing sound, and then came the crinkling noise of a page being turned." Readers looking for gorgeous language and richly developed atmosphere will be impressed and moved. A queer coming-of-age novel that achieves rare peaks of lyricism and emotional intensity.

COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from March 1, 2025
Anglo Irish poet and memoirist Hewitt's reflective debut novel illuminates the complexity of gay adolescence with exceptional insight and graceful prose. In the cobblestone village of Thornmere in Northern England in 2002, 16-year-old James has recently come out to his parents and been outed at school, and he finds himself isolated socially. When he meets Luke, a troubled older boy who's arrived to work on his uncle's farm, James sees a chance to pursue romance or at least friendship with another boy outside of school. Given to hopeless crushes, James considers himself a ""fantasist"" and distrusts his own judgment. Hewitt sensitively traces James' struggles to determine just how much to risk for this relationship over the course of four seasons. After James learns that Luke's father is a criminal, he begins to wonder how much of that criminality the rebellious Luke has inherited, and James begins to imagine this ""spectre"" showing up to threaten him. As his feelings for Luke grow more fervent, they put James' loyalties to his own family to a dangerous test. With its masterful interiority, Hewitt's novel will be a must-read for fans of �douard Louis, Douglas Stuart, and Brandon Taylor.

COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.