I couldn’t tell you why I chose to pick up The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears other than the title. I saw it on a list of books related to immigration and it stuck out to me. I didn’t do any research on it beforehand because I’d like to think everything I need to know is written on the page. What I had read from the back of the book is that it follows an Ethiopian immigrant who runs a grocery store and recounts the horror he experienced before immigrating. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I haven’t read much of it so far, but what I have read has elicited experiences more so on the writing and not so much about the story itself. Because of this the experience I am having is Dissociation<\/strong>. The glossary defines this as “Sense of detachment from what is happening”. The book opens with a bunch of men in a store. It’s giving background to characters in a way that isn’t very moving. The only thought I had throughout the entire first chapter was “wow, this is really boring”, and then I thought about anything else while I was listening to it on audiobook. The voice actor has an Ethiopian accent, which I thought was helpful in the storytelling at first, but it didn’t really keep me engaged the way I thought it would.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “At eight o’clock Joseph and Kenneth come into the store. They come almost every Tuesday. It’s become a routine among the three of us without our ever having acknowledged it as such. Sometimes only one of them comes. Sometimes neither of them. No questions are asked because nothing is expected. Seventeen years ago we were all new immigrants working as valets at the Capitol Hotel. According to the plaque outside the main entrance, the hotel was built to resemble the Medicis family house in Italy. On weekends tourists lined the rooftop to stare at the snipers perched on the White House roof. It was there that Kenneth became Ken the Kenyan and Joseph, Joe from the Congo. I was skinnier then than I am now, and a s our manager said, I didn’t need a nickname to remind him I was Ethiopian”<\/p>\n\n\n\n – Mengestu, pg. 1<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n I think the narrative technology being used here is Stream of Consciousness<\/strong>, which is defined as “A narration technology that allows the reader to witness the free flow of characters\u2019 inner thoughts”. Typically I’m a really big fan of this technology, but for some reason in this context it wasn’t working for me. It felt like it went on for forever and I just didn’t care enough to pay attention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Because I don’t like to give up on a book so early on, I listened to chapter 2 to see what it was about. This is where I would say I experienced Mind Wandering<\/strong>, which is defined as “Having thoughts unrelated to a specific task”. To me this experience has a more positive connotation than Dissociation<\/strong>, which is how I felt about chapter 2. The characters unfold more, and suddenly I began to care more about the story that was happening before me. The main character, Sepha, describes a white woman moving into his neighborhood, and this is where the story became interesting to me. Yet, I found myself thinking more about the author and why they wrote this book. This was the first time in a really long time that I was interested in reading the background of the book. I haven’t decided yet if I want to do so, but if my mind keeps wandering while I read it, I think I may have to in order to preserve the integrity of the book. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Through them I learned that the woman was a lesbian bitch with too much money on her hands”<\/p>\n\n\n\n – Mengestu, pg. 28<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This honestly took me by surprise, and then made me laugh. The way the narrator had said it was so outlandish, and the Sepha likes Judith (the person he’s talking about), so it was just bizarre. Suddenly I wanted to know more about who wrote this book. For me, reading from a page puts me in the body of the narrator, even if they could not be more different from me. Because I’m consuming this as an audiobook and the narrator is an Ethiopian man, I’m not finding myself within the main character. Instead it feels more like reading an autobiography, which is why I’m feeling like I want to know if it’s truly fiction or based on a true story. Especially with a comment like that, I want to know if Sepha thinks that way about Judith as a character choice, or if Dinaw Mengestu feels that way as a person. I think the narrative technology is I Voice<\/strong>, but I also think the format of said I Voice<\/strong> is what is eliciting this experience for me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I decided I did not care enough for this book to read the second half, but I did care enough to do the research on it. Mostly because I was too curious not to. After reading more about it, I think Mengestu achieved what he wanted. It’s based on his own experience in comparison to the idea of immigration. The book is supposed to feel lonely and it’s supposed to feel mundane because not every story of immigration is some great epic. It doesn’t have to be harrowing to matter, and I think Mengestu achieved that goal. I wish that I had read about the background when it had initially sparked my interest because it makes me feel invested now in a way I wasn’t while I was reading. A book intertwined with personal narrative is different to me than fiction in that the author matters more to me. If I had known that element as a fact instead of something I had an inkling about, I think I could have invested more into the novel. It changes the stakes for me to know it’s a personal story rather than purely fiction. Because I feel that everything should be laid out on the page, I wish this story had some sort of prologue or preface to it that I could have read before hand. That way it still would have been my choice to read it or not, but the information that changes the way I viewed the book would have been there for me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Experiences \u2013 WonderCat<\/em>. https:\/\/wonder-cat.org\/experiences\/<\/a>. Accessed 01 Mar. 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mengestu, Dinaw.\u00a0The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears<\/em>. National Endowment for the Arts, NEA Big Read,\u00a0https:\/\/www.arts.gov\/initiatives\/nea-big-read\/beautiful-things-heaven-bears<\/a>. Accessed 8 Mar. 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Middle Experience and Technology<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Final Thoughts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Works Cited<\/h2>\n\n\n\n