![]() ![]() He gets, pitch perfect, the warmly abrasive wit of the violently displaced and their need to keep alive some textured memories - even memories that wound - amid America’s demanding amnesia. Mengestu has a fine ear for the way immigrants from damaged places talk in the sanctuary of their own company, free from the exhausting courtesies of self-anthropologizing explanation. The deeply felt pain in Mengestu’s novel is offset by the solace of friendship - whether it’s a friendship that hovers on the verge of romance, a friendship between an adult and a child or, above all, the friendships that steady the daily lives of fellow immigrants. Almost every page reminds us that 'departure' and 'arrival' are deceptively decisive words. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears is about the animate presence of loss, about a man struggling to find traction in his ostensibly current life as proprietor of an ailing Logan Circle grocery store. ![]()
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