The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears
a novel by by Dinaw Mengestu, Riverhead Books, 2007
Reviewed April 2008 by Linda Carlson
Once I got past the title (a reference to Dante’s Inferno), I found this book to be really good. So good, in fact, that it received a Guardian First Book Award in 2007.
The protagonist of Beautiful Things is Stephanos, an Ethiopian-born shopkeeper in a neighborhood of Washington, D.C. that is in the process of becoming gentrified. Stephanos has lived in the US for 18 years, but has little to show for it in terms of human connections. The book sketches the upheaval in his life that comes via new relationships and the changes in his neighborhood. Several important themes are explored, among them loss of family, class and race differences, and the immigrant experience.
Stephanos’ two best friends are also from Africa (Kenya and Somalia, precisely), and their conversations alone make this book worth reading. On a personal level, I liked getting inside Stephanos’ head and seeing through his Ethiopian eyes (is there an ESL teacher out there who can go a week without bumping into an east African or two?)
The author, Dinaw Mengestu, was born in Ethiopia, but immigrated to the US with his family when he was a baby. This is his first novel, and I hope he writes more. It might not be fair to call him the voice of east-African-Americans, but Beautiful Things does offer the reader a brief glimpse into the world of a relatively new immigrant population.