James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: A Novel is the book everyone is reading this summer (2024) and it’s not hard to see why. This is a compelling work that is both readily accessible to wide audience and also has deep messages about the state of our society. For me, McBride falls short in certain areas. A character reads the Talmud and the narrative keeps explaining that it is in Hebrew. That is not technically correct. It is in Aramaic and Hebrew, and sometime a curious mix of the two. This chipped away at me. Also, the water sub-plot seems strangely misplaced until it is used near the end. It is confusing and is deployed for a specific use only. It called the entire structure of the novel into question; it exposed the framework of the author’s choices to me for criticism. So, this is an accomplished but by no means perfect novel.
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