James McBride's "The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store" is a powerful and evocative novel that weaves together themes of community, resilience, and human connection. Set in a small, vibrant town, McBride’s narrative revolves around a diverse group of characters whose lives intersect at the titular grocery store. The novel’s rich, multidimensional storytelling captures the complexities of racial and social issues with both compassion and depth. McBride’s prose is lyrical and engaging, drawing readers into a world of warmth, struggle, and hope. "The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store" is a compelling and heartfelt read that resonates with authenticity and grace.

A gorgeous novel about a small town and the bonds of community formed between marginalised groups.
Enter the world of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, where the Jewish and Black communities of Chicken Hill live side by side.
It’s gritty but also empathic, celebrating difference and showing kindness that compels us to move heaven and earth to help each other.
We all need this love affirming novel - shining a light on how things could be if we would only work together.
Thanks #jamesmcbride @orionpublishing & @netgalley for an uplifting read

Unfortunately I had to DNF this title after completing the first section. The writing was enjoyable but I just could not connect with the story as much as I would have liked to which has disappointed me because I have heard such great things about this book.
Thanks, as always, to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this book.

Deacon King Kong was a great book and this one is even better. A choral picture of people and their life.
The author is a master storyteller and the story is intriguing, thought provoking and well plotted
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

'The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store' is a harrowing but ultimately uplifting novel about community and collaboration in predominantly Black and Jewish neighbourhood in 1930s Pennsylvania. James McBride paints Chicken Hill in Pottstown with great affection as we get to know the complex web of characters who inhabit it.

In particular, the novel focuses on Moshe, whose theatre becomes a very successful venue hosting both Black and Jewish performers, and Moshe's American-born Jewish wife Chona, who runs the eponymous grocery store with great generosity (if rather less financial success.) They are assisted by Nate and Addie, a Black couple whose nephew Dodo has been left deaf and dumb by the explosion of a stove. When state authorities want Dodo to be committed to a mental institution, Moshe and Chona agree to hide Dodo in their store. Later on, the whole community comes together in a daring plan to rescue Dodo at the same time as redressing other injustices in Pottstown.

At times it can be difficult to keep track of all the characters' whereabouts in what becomes an increasingly hectic and madcap plot but by the end, McBride ties up all the loose ends very satisfyingly. This is an ambitious and frequently very entertaining novel featuring a large and memorable cast of characters, each shaped by their own experiences of America: these combine to offer a profound meditation on the the role of immigrant experience in America's past and present. McBride doesn't shy away from depicting the harsh realities of racism and antisemitism in 1930s America, as well as showing the regressive attitudes towards the disabled and appalling conditions inside America's mental institutions, but this is combined with a strong and abiding sense of hope.

This is a brilliant and important work of historical fiction. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.

This was a DNF for me, mostly because I find the writing style hard to read. Maybe I'll try again on audio, as I heard such great things about this author

A very good story about communities from marginalised backgrounds coming together to support one another. The friendship between Dodo and Monkey Pants made me more emotional than I was anticipating, especially last bit of the novel. A beautiful ode to the friendships that shape us and ultimately save us.

This was such a fast-paced book - I flew through this story and the community that these characters inhibited welcomed me with open arms!

3.5 stars rounded up.

McBride writes about American community really well. He creates a diverse cast of characters who exist together in spite of their differences. He addresses local issues of racism and abuse of power deftly providing metaphors for the national story of American history.

McBride is a skilled writer whose descriptions are colourful and vivid taking his readers by the hand through the stories of different members of the Pottstown community.

I did feel that the movement between characters took me away from the emotional attachment I had to the main storyline which was incredibly sad and traumatic at times. The blend of this with the quirky characterisation of the side characters did not quite work to create a cohesive reading experience for me and it was at times slightly jarring.

However, McBride does what he does really well and fans of Deacon King Kong will definitely enjoy this book.

This honest review is given with thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this book.

One of my favourite books of 2020 was "Deacon King Kong", which I read in one day, during lockdown, when there was little else to do, but hang out in my backyard in the sun. I have such vivid memories of Sportscoat and his motley gang of neighbours and the sense of community that this author imbued left me heartsore for all the people I was missing in my life at that time. The was no question in my mind about reading his next book, and I was elated upon spotting this new title which centres on a small Pennsylvanian town, whose citizens are mostly Jews who haven't made it big enough yet to move downhill, or Negros (sic) who are next in the pecking order for accessible neighbourhoods.

I have to say, this book didn't grab me from the get-go the way Deacon did. I struggled with the dialogue to begin with, and floundered a little among the hoards of characters that were being introduced at a rate of knots. Every new chapter felt like a new novel, full of segues and tangents. Perhaps what I needed was to give this story my total and undivided attention that it's predecessor received from me, in order to get my feet under the table.

That's all it took. And now I realise that this is what James McBride demands of us. it was only when I entered his world and allowed myself to be swept up in his storytelling that I opened my mind to the possibilities of where we were going. The plot is simple, mostly linear, but each perspective becomes a fully immersive experience. It's tempting to think that there's a whole lot of waffling and self indulgence on the part of the author, and more than a few times I wished McBride would just land the plane, but it's only as we near the last couple of chapters that the light at the end of the tunnel appears.

As in Deacon King Kong, the gratification at the end of this story is less about the plot (which contrary to my original concerns is fully developed with a satisfying conclusion), and so much more about the wonderful characters we meet along the way, their interactions, alliances, feuds and grievances, their motivations and the consequences of compassion, guilt, jealousy, ambition, love, loyalty, friendship. With acerbic and frequently humorous commentary on race, class, religion, migration, McBride draws every single element of his apparent tangents and side hustles into the narrative. Not a word or phrase goes to waste.

The patient reader will love this. If like me, you develop an itch at the thought of a wild goose chase or two in the narrative, trust this author, succumb to the idiosyncrasies. The plane gets landed.

Publication date: 9th November 2023
Thanks to #NetGalley and #OrionPublishing for the ARC

This was one of most anticipated reads of the year after reading some early excellent reviews and perhaps this is a contributory reason why I was smidgen disappointed with this one.
It had every ingredient to be a wonderful read but it just didn’t fully work for me. The writing is incredible, the detail, the back stories, the succinct capture of a place in time but there were just too many characters. I’d find myself fully engrossed and then a new chapter would begin and it would feel like I’d started a completely different book. The same happened each time I picked this book up, it took effort to remember who was who and what was happening which led to a disjointed reading experience. There were whole chapters and so many passages that were a joy to read but then others where I felt lost. Maybe it was frame of mind when reading but overall it didn’t work for me. There are some great stories within this book but they were hidden by too many secondary characters. It felt like by the closing chapters , the beginning of the book was remembered and the ending was tied up. Gorgeous writing but unnecessarily convoluted which masked a lot of the magic in this one.

James McBride is an author who is new to me and this was a fascinating and original tale of folks, their back stories and a mystery being solved regarding he identity of a body dug up from the foundations of an old building.

The writing is beautiful, even elegiac in parts and some of the characters grabbed my attention. My sole complaint is perhaps there were too many of them and a few too many explorations into tributaries and areas well away from the main plot. However I was well entertained. Thank you.

This is the latest bewitching offering from the sublime writer, James McBride, historical fiction that celebrates community, those with disabilities whose main limitation so often is the perception of others, music, and the history of Black and immigrant Jewish people in the US. In 1972, troopers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, find a skeleton at the bottom of a well, a storm follows, blowing everything away. The mystery of the skeleton takes us back in time, to secrets of the residents of Chicken Hill, an impoverished, vibrant neighbourhood, where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side with their dreams, loves, and sorrows, and where the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store is located, run by a limping Jewish Chona Ludlow, a force to be reckoned with.

Chona's faith is her heart, integral to her, part of a tradition aiming to bring light in the world, believing that was what Judaism should do, bring light and reflection between cultures, as we observe, she extends infinite credit to those in need. Her husband, Moshe, a man of ideas and wit, runs the All American Dance Hall and Theatre, who built his wealth on joyful Jewish gatherings, where he meets Malachi, a demon of a wild dancer, going on to hold similar events for the black community, paying little attention to any opposition. When Chona takes in Dodo, a black child made deaf in a accident, he becomes the light and love of her life, he is hers! She does her best to protect him from the horrors of Pennhurst, an insane asylum the white establishment deem where Dodo should be. The Ku Klux Klan supporting Doc Roberts plays a central part that results in Dodo meeting Monkey Pants, who schools him in the art of surviving in the oldest and worst mental institution in the history of the US.

It is McBride's talent for creating a host of offbeat and memorable characters that lies at the heart of his spiritual and magical art of storytelling in which Blacks and Jews unite, heaven and earth rising to address a dreadful injustice. He has the rare gift of transporting the reader into a bleak and hard world of misery, chaos, racism, prejudice, pain and struggle, yet which is simultaneously overflowing with joy, love and solidarity, becoming uplifting, inspiring, vivid, colourful and hopeful. Here, you will meet the likes of the incredible Nate and Addie Timblin, Fatty, the Italian Big Soap, Isaac, the oracle that is Miggy, and Paper, a woman of power, laughter and gossip, whilst encountering black hearts too, such as that of Doc Roberts and 'Son of Man'. A remarkably profound, spellbinding and thoughtful historical read I have no hesitation in recommending highly! Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

It's 1972, and an attempt to dig the foundation for a proposed building yields an unexpected discovery - human bones. How they came to be there is the essence of McBride's story.

Set in the mixed Jewish and African American community of Chicken Hill, Pennsylvania in the 1930s, this book does a good job of exploring America's racial legacy, which so many white Americans - even today - would prefer to look away from.

Against the backdrop of the Great Depression, the town's white inhabitants - accompanied by a doctor, who is also a Klan member! - come for a young black boy who is both mute and deaf, with the aim of institutionalizing him in a terrible place.

Their plans are derailed by an alliance of black and Jewish residents who hide the boy, including Chona Ludlow, a generous soul who runs the aptly-named Heaven and Earth grocery store. Because what, after all is more important in a town like this than spiritual upliftment and community life?

Chona is also married to Moshe, a Romanian Jew, who decides to integrate his dance hall business with some of the expected consequences. Overall, the story brings home the consequences of being something other than white and Christian in the US at that time. Something that many minorities continue to grapple with today, particularly in the post Trump era, when so many fault lines have been brought into sharp relief.

This is a well-written and interesting book, which utilizes the vernacular of its time and location. There is a lot of effort put into explaining context, which sometimes detracts from the story telling, and I would have prefered it to be a little shorter, but overall it's a book well worth reading. I give it 3.5 stars.

My main criticism is that it was difficult to keep track of the number of characters. I felt it would have benefited from fewer characters and giving more attention to those few. That said, beautiful writing. And heartwarming story.