Heaven & Earth Grocery Store Novel

The story, the plot and the characters were all so enjoyable. This is a lovely adventure and a heartwarming read.

Personnelle

Good story with interesting characters. Some of the narrator commentary injected about the future felt a little too preachy though

This book deserves more than five stars. It is phenomenal. Beautifully written, emotionally wrenching, it’s a tale of a poor community of immigrant Jews and Southern Blacks in PA in the mid-1930s. Neither group trusts the other until an American Jewess, Chona, starts running a store that caters to Blacks. She turns a blind eye when customers can’t pay their bills, and she hands out small gifts to children, the most popular being marbles.

There’s so much love here. Chona and her husband Moshe remain passionately in love after twelve years of marriage. Chona and her best friend, a Black girl named Bernice, haven’t spoken in years, but Chona still loves her. Chona takes care of a deaf Black boy whom the authorities want to house in a horror of a state insane asylum, even though he’s neither insane nor mentally incapacitated. Chona is the glue that holds the neighborhood together.

There are many, many characters, and the first part of the book devotes a chapter to each. There’s a lot of humor, a lot of compassion, and again, so much love – of the author for his characters.

I tried reading McBride’s Deacon King Kong a few years ago and couldn’t get into it. I’m going to try again in hopes I find the same magic that’s in this book. He’s such a talented author. I’m bowled over.

James McBride is an accomplished saxophonist/jazz musician. I knew that going into the book. (Oh, digression–did you know that he also played with the band, The Remainders? That’s a band with other writers like Amy Tan, Dave Barry, Barbara Kingsolver, Stephen King, Maya Angelou and several others who played for charity and fundraising). Anyway, I mention his musicianship because I see it all over the pages of The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store.

This is the first book I’ve read by McBride (definitely more to come), so pardon my schoolgirlish, giggly first crush for the way that his writing lifts me up, how his words and characters opened my heart, only to break it, and then put it back together in a most absolute and tender way. James McBride is a kind, gentle soul, and his writing reflects this—his ability to bring the world together in a novel. He honors humanity. We are all connected, and this author compels that naturally from his characters. Now, how great is that, yeah?

I want to put this in your hands and promise you a magnificent reading experience. It starts off in a shaggy dog kind of way, with an ensemble of characters, several who possess whimsical names like Fatty, Big Soap, Monkey Pants, Dodo. And their names fit flawlessly to their nature. The story starts with a 1972 prologue—a human skeleton is found in an old abandoned well, and then the body of the story begins in 1936 in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, a place called Chicken Hill, where Jews, immigrants, and Black folks lived side by side, sometimes in harmony, other times in discord, but here’s the thing—the goodness of people, the kindness of their hearts—that is what ultimately rises to the top.

For the story to unfold, there has to be some sinister aspects, too—aren’t we still fighting the fight of ignorance, bigotry, corruption, meanness? But, in the McBride world, well, we also follow the long stretch of yarn as it wends around this way and that, through streets and backyards, dirt roads, onto hills and a shul and a church, through tunnels and a dance hall. And The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store.

I don’t need to rehash the plot, but there are a few fun facts about this book worth mentioning in a review. Such as, there are an abundance of characters introduced early on, and then again later on, before the plot actually launches. That’s the shaggy part. We don’t get to the plot too quickly—instead, Mcbride takes his time, builds the characters. They are already leaping off the pages by the time the plot rolls in.

There are subplots, too, but in the end, they all weave their chords and come together. McBride may slow your roll at first, but it’s a winning bonanza of breadth and depth, from the smallest detail to the broadest design. Scenes that seem initially inconsequential become key notes later on.

Early on, we meet the arresting Jewess, Chona. Chona is an unforgettable female protagonist—I’m keeping her in my journal of best. female. characters. ever. She is handicapped with a limp—but her limp doesn’t stop her strength of purpose, her fierce dignity, her bounteous benevolence, her gentle grace, and her consummate integrity. You will fall in love with her, just like Moshe, the theater and dance hall owner, did. Moshe and Chona dared to welcome change and inclusivity to their part of the world.

At this time, in the 1930s, Black people were almost exclusively cast in menial jobs. But Moshe books Black jazz bands to play at his theater, and successfully includes all tribes together at the dance hall, who “frolicked and laughed, dancing as if they were birds enjoying flight for the first time.” Chona runs the grocery store, and extends credit to anyone who can’t afford to pay; she rarely keeps a record of their debt. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store may lose money, but it is rich in goodwill and kindness.

Back to this being like a musical book—a jazzy book. Jazz music conjures that raspy, soulful, edgy flavor, blended from a mix of cultures and harmonies. McBride embraces those diverse, insistent, zingy, soul-stirring rhythms and blues into the narrative threads of his novel. I can hear the swing and the chase, the boogie and the blues, the sounds that go everywhere at once and jelly roll the story within a complex set of fusion and feelings. It’s also just a damned good story!

The narrative pulls you here and there, up and down, and when you meet Dodo, the sweet and barely teenaged deaf kid, your protective instincts will wrap yourself around him and never want to let him go. And, when Dodo meets Monkey Pants—well, this right there—the heart of the novel that will break you in pieces.

At times, I had a wellspring of tears—not just for joy or anguish. Sure, comedy and tragedy fill these pages. But McBride’s natural humanity and gentle nature is the colossal, phenomenal heart of the book. The author steps aside, he doesn’t ever intrude. The core of the narrative are the characters. Their cacophony becomes a coda for living large.

This tale made me want to be better, to do better, to open my eyes to all the missed connections, to fix the broken chords and forge new ones, and seek eternally to strengthen them. We are humanity, we are the essential substance to add love to the world, one modest good deed at a time. That is The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store.

Tutto bene