Carol Ann Page is struggling after a painful divorce, and things only get worse when she accidentally slices off her thumb. When she is hospitalized, she is privy to a phenomenon no one can explain: Everyone’s pain is illuminated. From sore spines and aching joints, from sliced thumbs and ruptured spleens, pain becomes a very visible–and strangely beautiful–thing.
Charles Yu is lonely. More often that not, he’s completely tuned out of reality—usually because he’s set his time machine for Present-Indefinite, which means he cruises about in a box where there is no time. He passes years in what others see as only minutes.
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears is a powerful story of loneliness and loss, but also of renewal and self-discovery. The spare, efficient prose is slow-moving at times, but that only showcases a narrative that is simultaneously rich and raw.
Melody Schreiber 