Letters from the lonely one: : A review of Kawakami's Heaven

By Devyani Rawat

Edited by Nandana

Have you ever read a book that didn’t just tell you a story, but quietly held up a mirror to your own loneliness?

Some books don’t just tell a story, they press on your scars until you finally look at them.

Well reading Heaven was like that, it felt like opening a quiet corner of myself I don’t usually let people see. Kawakami writes about “Eyes,” a fourteen-year-old boy with a lazy eye, and the brutal bullying he endures. It’s raw and uncomfortable because it isn’t written to shock you, it’s written to remind you how cruelty seeps into everyday silences.

But what struck me the most wasn’t the bullying, it was the way loneliness was described, how isolating it feels to move through the world with something you never asked for, and yet are punished for. And then there’s Kojima, another outcast, who reaches out to him through simple, fragile letters. Their bond is tender but heavy, like it shows how two broken people can recognize each other in ways the rest of the world refuses to.

What stayed with me is how Kawakami asks big questions in such a subtle way: What does it mean to suffer? Does pain make us stronger, or just more silent? Can friendship really be a kind of heaven when the world outside is so cruel?

For me, Heaven wasn’t just a story about adolescence or bullying, it was a mirror to the kind of quiet ache so many of us carry. It’s the kind of book that lingers, that you don’t just “finish,” because parts of it finish you first.