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Open, Heaven: A Novel
A stunning debut novel from the acclaimed young Irish poet Seán Hewitt, reminiscent of Garth Greenwell and Douglas Stuart in the intensity of its evocation of sexual awakening.
Set in a remote village in the North of England, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year in which two sixteen year old boys meet and transform each other’s lives.
James—a sheltered, shy sixteen-year-old—is alone in his newly discovered sexuality, full of an unruly desire but entirely inexperienced. As he is beginning to understand himself and his longings, he also realizes how his feelings threaten to separate him from his family and the rural community he has grown up in. He dreams of another life, fantasizing about what lies beyond the village’s leaf-ribboned boundaries, beyond his autonomy, tenderness, sex. Then, in the autumn of 2002, he meets Luke, a slightly older boy, handsome, unkempt, who comes with a reputation for danger. Abandoned by his parents—his father imprisoned, and his mother having moved to France for another man—Luke has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle at their farm just outside the village. James is immediately drawn to him, like the pull a fire makes on the air, dragging things into it and blazing them into its hot, white centre, drawn to this boy who is beautiful and impulsive, charismatic, troubled. But underneath Luke’s bravado is a deep wound—a longing for the love of his father and for the stability of family life.
Open, Heaven is a novel about desire, yearning, and the terror of first love. With the striking economy and lyricism that animate his work as a poet, Hewitt has written a mesmerizing hymn to boyhood, sensuality, and love in all its forms. A truly exceptional debut.
Set in a remote village in the North of England, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year in which two sixteen year old boys meet and transform each other’s lives.
James—a sheltered, shy sixteen-year-old—is alone in his newly discovered sexuality, full of an unruly desire but entirely inexperienced. As he is beginning to understand himself and his longings, he also realizes how his feelings threaten to separate him from his family and the rural community he has grown up in. He dreams of another life, fantasizing about what lies beyond the village’s leaf-ribboned boundaries, beyond his autonomy, tenderness, sex. Then, in the autumn of 2002, he meets Luke, a slightly older boy, handsome, unkempt, who comes with a reputation for danger. Abandoned by his parents—his father imprisoned, and his mother having moved to France for another man—Luke has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle at their farm just outside the village. James is immediately drawn to him, like the pull a fire makes on the air, dragging things into it and blazing them into its hot, white centre, drawn to this boy who is beautiful and impulsive, charismatic, troubled. But underneath Luke’s bravado is a deep wound—a longing for the love of his father and for the stability of family life.
Open, Heaven is a novel about desire, yearning, and the terror of first love. With the striking economy and lyricism that animate his work as a poet, Hewitt has written a mesmerizing hymn to boyhood, sensuality, and love in all its forms. A truly exceptional debut.
224 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication April 15, 2025
About the author
Seán Hewitt
17 books179 followersSeán Hewitt's debut collection of poetry, Tongues of Fire (2020), won the Laurel Prize in 2021. His memoir, All Down Darkness Wide (2022), won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2022. He lives in Dublin.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
August 22, 2024
i did not intend on loving this book as much as i did.
Open, Heaven is very reminiscent of douglas stuart’s works (gorgeous writing of a sad gay teenager Going Through It™️) and that is exactly up my alley. it also captures queer yearning in a similar way to Sunburn by chloe michelle howarth which, by the way, is one of my favorite books of all time. so essentially this book was made for me.
the main character was painted so vividly that i wanted to crawl into this book and give him a hug because goddamn does he need one. i felt his sorrow, his agony, and his typical teenage angst as if all of his emotions were my very own. the descriptions of how james (the mc) feels toward luke really tugged at my heart. i love stories that capture what it feels like to be young and in love—especially with queerness involved. it’s both painful and wonderful to see how quickly your life can revolve around a single person and the fear that they may not reciprocate those feelings. and oh my god, the writing. i could drone on and on about it but as soon as i get my hands on a physical copy you better believe it will be so marked up it will basically become unreadable.
gosh, this book hurt. but it hurt in such a beautiful, perfect way that i’m completely fine with. i want to turn this book into a teddy bear and hug it.
tl;dr: gorgeous, sad, heartbreaking, and perfectly queer novel that quite frankly ruined my life in the best way possible
(thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the arc!)
Open, Heaven is very reminiscent of douglas stuart’s works (gorgeous writing of a sad gay teenager Going Through It™️) and that is exactly up my alley. it also captures queer yearning in a similar way to Sunburn by chloe michelle howarth which, by the way, is one of my favorite books of all time. so essentially this book was made for me.
the main character was painted so vividly that i wanted to crawl into this book and give him a hug because goddamn does he need one. i felt his sorrow, his agony, and his typical teenage angst as if all of his emotions were my very own. the descriptions of how james (the mc) feels toward luke really tugged at my heart. i love stories that capture what it feels like to be young and in love—especially with queerness involved. it’s both painful and wonderful to see how quickly your life can revolve around a single person and the fear that they may not reciprocate those feelings. and oh my god, the writing. i could drone on and on about it but as soon as i get my hands on a physical copy you better believe it will be so marked up it will basically become unreadable.
gosh, this book hurt. but it hurt in such a beautiful, perfect way that i’m completely fine with. i want to turn this book into a teddy bear and hug it.
tl;dr: gorgeous, sad, heartbreaking, and perfectly queer novel that quite frankly ruined my life in the best way possible
(thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the arc!)
September 23, 2024
well holy fucking shit that was sensational
September 17, 2024
This post contains spoilers. Feel free to skip them and come back when you’ve experienced the book for yourself. I’ve marked where the spoilers begin and end in bold.
Comparisons are going to be made that this book is like Call Me By Your Name, Lie With Me, Swimming in the Dark, and other queer books that like to wade around in those murky, gray areas. Don’t get me wrong, I resist binary thinking, and as a queer person see it as genuinely harmful to the future of our community, but I don’t really like those books much for the same reason I’m having a hard time liking this one.
My feelings around books about unfulfilled queer desire, books that end with a return to heteronormativity, or books about the death of a queer person, are, to say the least, complex. While I do believe queer stories of all kinds should be told and allowed to exist, I think it’s also important to turn a critical eye toward what exactly is being perpetuated by these types of stories we tell.
Real stress and trauma is experienced by queers because of their loneliness, their longings, and their unmet desires. It is held in their minds and bodies, it is a real reality that will forever shape how they relate to others and to the world. It seems to be a common experience among queer people that we have less freedom as cis and straight people do to act out our desires because everything in our lives is shaped by the compulsory ideal of creating the perfect family unit, of finding that one person, of getting married and living happily-ever-after, despite the fact that there are other potentially more liberating ways of existing in the world.
Here’s where the spoilers start…
I struggle most with the ending of this book, its last two sections in particular. By the end, James does not seem like an individual with a strong sense of his own identity, he has no community or collective sense of belonging, and instead of returning to the clearing where he and Luke camped for the night after they ran away, he “reluctantly” merges and disappears driving among the other cars on the freeway and we are left wondering what exactly to make of what has just happened.
And that’s just it, he disappears. It’s as if queerness and all its complexities, its nuances, its different ways of being, once again leads to conformity, to assimilation, to this constant state of forever driving toward something we are not allowed to truly have fulfilled: desire. It is loneliness as an inevitable ending, and I refuse to believe that this is true for queer people. He does not take a different route, a different road, he has nothing left but to do what everyone else is doing, and that is to follow along.
While this isn’t where the book actually ends, it’s where it ends for James as an adult. The book switches back one final time to him as a teenager, saying goodbye to Luke at the end of the summer, longing for the impression Luke has just pressed into his hand, listening to church bells ring out into the sky.
And I think that says a lot about what this book is about: the institutions we as queer people are surrounded by, influenced by, and ultimately, I would argue, need to question and to resist.
This is not to say that I think that in order for this book to be “good” that James as a character must end up in a romantic relationship with Luke, that Luke must be something he is not, but rather to say that if this book was trying to offer an alternative to traditional structures of desire and longing (marriage, heteronormativity, an institution), it doesn’t seem to achieve that. James is not even friends with Luke as an adult, he is overwhelmed by his lasting desire for him, his longing for him still largely unfulfilled. An alternative relationship that could have fulfilled in some ways those unmet queer desires, perhaps a queerplatonic friendship, does not endure into adulthood.
Here’s where the spoilers end.
Reading is subjective, though, and I feel a lot of people will like this book. I just hope they think about its implications.
This book was really good at creating that tension of will-they-won’t-they, and the writing was full of momentum and gorgeous, poetic descriptions. It captures a great deal of the complexity of queer desire, longing, and sexual awakening but I would argue it doesn’t offer alternatives to heteronormative relationships.
Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Comparisons are going to be made that this book is like Call Me By Your Name, Lie With Me, Swimming in the Dark, and other queer books that like to wade around in those murky, gray areas. Don’t get me wrong, I resist binary thinking, and as a queer person see it as genuinely harmful to the future of our community, but I don’t really like those books much for the same reason I’m having a hard time liking this one.
My feelings around books about unfulfilled queer desire, books that end with a return to heteronormativity, or books about the death of a queer person, are, to say the least, complex. While I do believe queer stories of all kinds should be told and allowed to exist, I think it’s also important to turn a critical eye toward what exactly is being perpetuated by these types of stories we tell.
Real stress and trauma is experienced by queers because of their loneliness, their longings, and their unmet desires. It is held in their minds and bodies, it is a real reality that will forever shape how they relate to others and to the world. It seems to be a common experience among queer people that we have less freedom as cis and straight people do to act out our desires because everything in our lives is shaped by the compulsory ideal of creating the perfect family unit, of finding that one person, of getting married and living happily-ever-after, despite the fact that there are other potentially more liberating ways of existing in the world.
Here’s where the spoilers start…
I struggle most with the ending of this book, its last two sections in particular. By the end, James does not seem like an individual with a strong sense of his own identity, he has no community or collective sense of belonging, and instead of returning to the clearing where he and Luke camped for the night after they ran away, he “reluctantly” merges and disappears driving among the other cars on the freeway and we are left wondering what exactly to make of what has just happened.
And that’s just it, he disappears. It’s as if queerness and all its complexities, its nuances, its different ways of being, once again leads to conformity, to assimilation, to this constant state of forever driving toward something we are not allowed to truly have fulfilled: desire. It is loneliness as an inevitable ending, and I refuse to believe that this is true for queer people. He does not take a different route, a different road, he has nothing left but to do what everyone else is doing, and that is to follow along.
While this isn’t where the book actually ends, it’s where it ends for James as an adult. The book switches back one final time to him as a teenager, saying goodbye to Luke at the end of the summer, longing for the impression Luke has just pressed into his hand, listening to church bells ring out into the sky.
And I think that says a lot about what this book is about: the institutions we as queer people are surrounded by, influenced by, and ultimately, I would argue, need to question and to resist.
This is not to say that I think that in order for this book to be “good” that James as a character must end up in a romantic relationship with Luke, that Luke must be something he is not, but rather to say that if this book was trying to offer an alternative to traditional structures of desire and longing (marriage, heteronormativity, an institution), it doesn’t seem to achieve that. James is not even friends with Luke as an adult, he is overwhelmed by his lasting desire for him, his longing for him still largely unfulfilled. An alternative relationship that could have fulfilled in some ways those unmet queer desires, perhaps a queerplatonic friendship, does not endure into adulthood.
Here’s where the spoilers end.
Reading is subjective, though, and I feel a lot of people will like this book. I just hope they think about its implications.
This book was really good at creating that tension of will-they-won’t-they, and the writing was full of momentum and gorgeous, poetic descriptions. It captures a great deal of the complexity of queer desire, longing, and sexual awakening but I would argue it doesn’t offer alternatives to heteronormative relationships.
Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 29, 2024
A beautiful debut novel from poet Sean Hewitt. Set in an English countryside village. We follow teenager James on the cusp of adulthood. He's come out to his parents and is yearning for an intimacy that feels so completely unattainable in a place where he knows no other boys who feel the same as he does. Then he meets Luke, the 'troubled youth' who arrives to help out on his Uncle's farm whilst his mother has upped and left, and his dad is 'away'.
As the seasons pass, the two come to form a close friendship, and that intimacy that James craves feels within his grasp, if only he knew how Luke felt.
It's easy to see Hewitt's poetry come through in almost every line of this novel. "It was like walking through a folk song that afternoon - the blackbirds and the thrushes, the sweetness if the flowers, the boy who I loved, and who might even love me, waiting for me between the trees." He writes so beautifully of the English countryside, village life, the milk bottle run, the canal towpaths, the night skies, the trees and the birds.
I love books with a sense of nostalgia and coming-of-age, those maddening aches of first love. I think Hewitt does a fantastic job of capturing all this here. A gorgeous debut, and I hope Sean writes more novels.
As the seasons pass, the two come to form a close friendship, and that intimacy that James craves feels within his grasp, if only he knew how Luke felt.
It's easy to see Hewitt's poetry come through in almost every line of this novel. "It was like walking through a folk song that afternoon - the blackbirds and the thrushes, the sweetness if the flowers, the boy who I loved, and who might even love me, waiting for me between the trees." He writes so beautifully of the English countryside, village life, the milk bottle run, the canal towpaths, the night skies, the trees and the birds.
I love books with a sense of nostalgia and coming-of-age, those maddening aches of first love. I think Hewitt does a fantastic job of capturing all this here. A gorgeous debut, and I hope Sean writes more novels.
September 18, 2024
Open, Heaven is an incredibly immersive and poetic novel that follows sixteen year old James as he struggles through understanding himself and his queerness. The strongest part of this novel is the prose - I constantly found myself highlighting and rereading lines. The writing is just absolutely beautiful, begs to be devoured, and emotional without being overbearing or complicated.
Our main character James is the focus of this character study, and while there is definitely plot in this novel as well, it comes second to James's over-analyzation of everything happening around him. I found his internal monologuing to feel redundant at times, but it absolutely brought me back to my own adolescence and how easy it was to think about one thing (or one person) again and again and again and again (and again).
As others have said, this novel reminded me of 'Call Me by Your Name' and 'Swimming in the Dark'. If you liked either of those novels then I would highly recommend this book. Or, if you want to be thrown back into adolescent obsession, I would also highly recommend this book. If you want a fast-moving, swoon worthy romance, then I would look for something else.
Thank you to Netgalley for the eARC!
Our main character James is the focus of this character study, and while there is definitely plot in this novel as well, it comes second to James's over-analyzation of everything happening around him. I found his internal monologuing to feel redundant at times, but it absolutely brought me back to my own adolescence and how easy it was to think about one thing (or one person) again and again and again and again (and again).
As others have said, this novel reminded me of 'Call Me by Your Name' and 'Swimming in the Dark'. If you liked either of those novels then I would highly recommend this book. Or, if you want to be thrown back into adolescent obsession, I would also highly recommend this book. If you want a fast-moving, swoon worthy romance, then I would look for something else.
Thank you to Netgalley for the eARC!
August 25, 2024
this is so… i cannot put my hand on it but my god did it feel like home
this is an arc i got from netgalley and the publisher (thank u for accepting my request by the way) and the review is my own
you know how life feels extra hard when you know you’re different? this is an ode to that
to love to friendships to being different and thinking you’re unloved yet you probably are loved so much beyond belief
the sorrows of my teenage years have not left me yet because i have not left my abusive childhood home but one day i will
it’s nice to see life from other perspectives
alsooo the writing style was so much fun, very easy to go through finished it so fast i’m actually regretting this now.
the forget me nots actually are my favorite flowers ever so this is the reason this book was given a complete 5 stars!
this is an arc i got from netgalley and the publisher (thank u for accepting my request by the way) and the review is my own
you know how life feels extra hard when you know you’re different? this is an ode to that
to love to friendships to being different and thinking you’re unloved yet you probably are loved so much beyond belief
the sorrows of my teenage years have not left me yet because i have not left my abusive childhood home but one day i will
it’s nice to see life from other perspectives
alsooo the writing style was so much fun, very easy to go through finished it so fast i’m actually regretting this now.
the forget me nots actually are my favorite flowers ever so this is the reason this book was given a complete 5 stars!
August 18, 2024
A poignant and poetic coming of age story about James, a gay teenager who becomes fascinated, then falls in love with Luke, his charismatic neighbor and best friend. The writing is lyrical and the descriptions of the narrator’s small village and surrounding nature are visual and vivid. The turmoil, pain, and beauty of first love/desire was also very well rendered here, and the MC’s thoughts were relatable and realistic for his age.
This novel reminded me of Call Me By Your Name in tone and theme - so if you’re a CMBYN fan you’ll probably love this one, too.
Read as part of my personal challenge to read more novels by non-US authors this year!
**Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!**
This novel reminded me of Call Me By Your Name in tone and theme - so if you’re a CMBYN fan you’ll probably love this one, too.
Read as part of my personal challenge to read more novels by non-US authors this year!
**Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!**
August 21, 2024
Oh, this hurt me. Great descriptive writing that painted a lovely picture of the seasons and life in this Northern England village. It felt as if I was there and was rather poetic. On top of that, a very raw portrayal of being a teenager: feelings of inadequacy, desire, embarrassment, shame and guilt. How these emotions still linger, yet transform into adulthood. Above all, the agony of loving someone and wanting to be loved in return. UGH. I want more.
Thank you, NetGalley, for accepting my request for an ARC.
Thank you, NetGalley, for accepting my request for an ARC.
August 31, 2024
Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for sending me an e-ARC of this book.
This was so unexpectedly beautiful and heartbreaking. I want to start by saying the prose is very good and quite gorgeous. My main hang-up when reading novels written by poets is that the writing can sometimes be too flowery for my taste, but I found that Open, Heaven was rich without being overwrought.
James, as a character, is also very well written. We start the novel with him talking a bit about Luke and divulging some information about his current life. These little morsels of info made me curious to read on and see how this year with Luke affected James as a teen and an adult. Sixteen year-old James is shy and lonely, the only openly gay kid in his village. He has no friends at school, and jumps at the chance to spend more time with Luke. The slow development of James' unrequited love for Luke and how it affected the rest of his life (namely, how he interacted with his parents and younger brother) was very well done.
This being a first person POV, we get a very clear look at what James is thinking and feeling. I think Hewitt wrote James' perspective very realistically. I could understand why James was acting the way he was. I also saw a lot of my teenage self in James too, with all that loneliness and isolation. Hewitt does a beautiful job capturing the pain and longing that comes along with being outcast from your peers.
This was so unexpectedly beautiful and heartbreaking. I want to start by saying the prose is very good and quite gorgeous. My main hang-up when reading novels written by poets is that the writing can sometimes be too flowery for my taste, but I found that Open, Heaven was rich without being overwrought.
James, as a character, is also very well written. We start the novel with him talking a bit about Luke and divulging some information about his current life. These little morsels of info made me curious to read on and see how this year with Luke affected James as a teen and an adult. Sixteen year-old James is shy and lonely, the only openly gay kid in his village. He has no friends at school, and jumps at the chance to spend more time with Luke. The slow development of James' unrequited love for Luke and how it affected the rest of his life (namely, how he interacted with his parents and younger brother) was very well done.
This being a first person POV, we get a very clear look at what James is thinking and feeling. I think Hewitt wrote James' perspective very realistically. I could understand why James was acting the way he was. I also saw a lot of my teenage self in James too, with all that loneliness and isolation. Hewitt does a beautiful job capturing the pain and longing that comes along with being outcast from your peers.
September 2, 2024
Open, Heaven is the debut novel of Seán Hewitt. It follows James, a teenage boy growing up in a small village in England, through the year in which he meets Luke, the rebellious nephew of a local farmer and James' first love.
This is a small but mighty little novel, which somehow manages to pack so much into its pages. It deals with love, sexuality, grief, desire, and everything else that comes along with growing up. It is really a moving slice of life novel, with a hint of nostalgia woven throughout. And while James is truly the heart of this book, his connections with the other characters are what truly made my heart ache and swell as the story unfolded.
Hewitt's prose is decidedly unmatched, and at this point I would read his grocery list just to see how he'd make me feel about produce and dairy.
Thank you to the publisher Knopf and NetGalley for the eArc of this book!
This is a small but mighty little novel, which somehow manages to pack so much into its pages. It deals with love, sexuality, grief, desire, and everything else that comes along with growing up. It is really a moving slice of life novel, with a hint of nostalgia woven throughout. And while James is truly the heart of this book, his connections with the other characters are what truly made my heart ache and swell as the story unfolded.
Hewitt's prose is decidedly unmatched, and at this point I would read his grocery list just to see how he'd make me feel about produce and dairy.
Thank you to the publisher Knopf and NetGalley for the eArc of this book!
September 27, 2024
Two teenage boys in a small village in northern England, outsiders both in their own ways, strike up an unlikely friendship in this beautiful debut novel about boyhood, vulnerability, and the perils of desire. Seán Hewitt, an award-winning poet, infuses Open, Heaven with gorgeous prose that belies the thread of disquiet veining through the novel's core. It's as much a tender coming-of-awareness story for Hewitt's lonely, gay teen protagonist, James, as it is a story of being caught in the uneasy space of in-between...between boyhood and adulthood, between friendship and infatuation, between the heartache of feeling invisible and elation at finally being seen, between an interior emotional life and the world beyond, between the hunger of the body and the consequences of the heart.
September 16, 2024
This book really sinks into your cushioned heart and pulls out the nearly forgotten bits of youthful pain and hope and longing. Open, Heaven is beautifully lyrical as it dives into the vivid emotional life of a young man experiencing his first love. I felt the book mirrored, in some ways, Virginia Woolf's languid stream of consciousness style of evoking both place and feeling. Sean Hewitt's brightly descriptive sense of place enhances the imaginative emotions expressed by the young protagonist. Since it's not yet published, I won't quote from it, but if I did, it would be so hard to choose from the many images that stung my heart.
August 30, 2024
3.5 stars, rounded up.
I definitely enjoyed portions of this, especially the beginning. The writing is lyrical and beautiful, but at times it felt a bit much. I found myself really drawn to James’s character as an adult and wish we had a bit more of his perspective throughout the story.
But overall, this is a tender slice of life story about first love.
If you’re a fan of Call Me By Your Name or Swimming in the Dark, this one is definitely worth checking out.
(Thank you to the publisher for the ARC)
I definitely enjoyed portions of this, especially the beginning. The writing is lyrical and beautiful, but at times it felt a bit much. I found myself really drawn to James’s character as an adult and wish we had a bit more of his perspective throughout the story.
But overall, this is a tender slice of life story about first love.
If you’re a fan of Call Me By Your Name or Swimming in the Dark, this one is definitely worth checking out.
(Thank you to the publisher for the ARC)
September 12, 2024
I needed to read this book. Actually, 13 year old Maddie needed adult Maddie to read this book. OPEN, HEAVEN spoke to my tween soul— a girl experiencing her first queer feelings at a time that is confusing for all adolescents, even without the added questions of sexuality. A girl who needed questions answered that she didn’t even have the vocabulary with which to ask. A girl whose first same gender crush became all-consuming and world-altering. And, over a decade later, her world is still a little altered from that first love.
I’ll always carry a little bit of that first queer love with me; Sean Hewitt captures this sentiment and all of the above feelings perfectly in the masterpiece that is OPEN, HEAVEN.
Thank you to the publisher and edelweiss for my advanced copy!
I’ll always carry a little bit of that first queer love with me; Sean Hewitt captures this sentiment and all of the above feelings perfectly in the masterpiece that is OPEN, HEAVEN.
Thank you to the publisher and edelweiss for my advanced copy!
September 29, 2024
Wow! What a read. This is very much a coming of age novel and discovering your queerness. The longing that James has for Luke feels so reminiscent of the first time you really fall for someone. It is so well described. The book did keep me at the edge of my seat, and at the end almost brought me to tears. What a beautiful story.
Thank you Knopf & Net Galley for an ARC of this book.
Thank you Knopf & Net Galley for an ARC of this book.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews