"Love confused me, bewildered me, tore me apart, but not because it was not love, but because I thought it was fake, some unreal version that did not accord with the love I had dreamt alone"

Open Heaven is a beautiful that truly digs deep into the first love and emotions of a teenager=James. After a twenty year gap he returns to the area he grew up in and which had a profound effect upon his future life.

James lives in a quiet village community; trying to define his path in the world and his own identity - he is gay and open. Felling isolated and having no true friends, he lives a solitary existence beyond the classroom with his parents and young brother Eddie who suffers from seizures. Upon taking up a part time job helping the milkman, he fantasises about meeting men and chances upon encountering Luke- a young man who staying on a farm with relatives . Initially appearing distant and alien to James, Luke holds a deep attraction and fascination.

This is such a tender tory set over one year and the friendship that builds between the two boys- the emotions felt by James are truly raw and palpable and should connect with all readers who have endured the 'eternal turmoil' and yearning of a first love. The second guessing; the power of the imagination; the loneliness of not being able to express or understand feelings and the utter solitariness felt by James is incredibly moving. He is also torn between familial duty - especially towards his young brother- and its 'suffocation" and the need to be free. The interplay between the two characters is pitch perfect.

Seán Hewitt has created a compassionate and at times raw coming of age story- nuanced; laden with beautiful prose and nostalgic.

This is a book for YA readership and adults alike - an eternal tale in which all readers should recognise elements of themselves as they navigate/ed the exploration of love and identity

A beautiful debut and highly recommended

Both a beautifully tender queer coming of age novel, and a subtle piece of nature writing on the northern countryside, this books is like Seán Hewitt's poetry has come to life. Hewitt possesses the ability to make you flinch with his writing; there are flashes of eeriness and shocking inner thoughts, but mostly the prose is so stunning and familiar I had to stop and take a breath when reading. The most truthful novel about love, young love, unrequited love or queer love that I have read in a long time.

I loved this book! I was already a fan of Sean Hewitt's poetry but think that novels by poets can sometimes be a bit clunky. However, Open, Heaven is so well-written - full of lush descriptions of the countryside but through the lens of nostalgia, a narrator looking into the past after a break up with his husband, and a sweeping and intense coming-of-age story. It may be looser on plot, but I was completely transported back to that age. I think the April pub date for this is perfect as it will be a gorgeous spring read. I hope he is writing another novel!

SEAN HEWITT – OPEN HEAVEN *****
This is an exquisite novel. His prose, descriptions of the village where he lived and loved as a boy, the seasons, remind me of the countryside descriptions of H E Bates at his most brilliant. The framing, the older man looking back at himself as a child, reminds me of the film of The Go Between. Talking of the village he returns to he says, “It was as though time had visited it just once, in the early nineteenth century.’
If you like explosions and car chases and high drama, this is not for you. This is an altogether different beast. Calm and measured on the surface, yet seething with passion and emotion underneath. Something Alan Hollinghurst might write. Has to be my most favourite book of the year.

From the first page to the very last I was held by Seán Hewitt’s stunningly beautiful writing in Open, Heaven. This is a tender, emotional coming out story. A story about love.

James is insecure, coming of age and coming out at 16. He lives rurally with his family. Just outside the village, teenager Luke arrives to stay with his uncle on a farm. Luke has confidence and a brazen attitude. His past is not without trouble.

What builds between James and Luke is a friendship, a comradery, and yes love. However, the love is unrequited. James’s desire is raw and intense, his painful yearning is angst filled. The writing is truly poetic and breathtaking. Even the author’s descriptions of the natural world, the forest, the sky, capturing the colours, the scents, are so profoundly written I felt there.

Open, Heaven left me in tears for the poignant beauty, the loss. For all that was and has passed, for all of us. It’s an outstanding book.

Thank you to Random House UK, Vintage and NetGalley for the arc in exchange for my honest review.

I loved every page of this masterful yet tender novel, about a young man looking back on a particular, pivotal moment in time, right on the cusp between boyhood and adulthood, and the boy he met who in many ways left him changed for life.

A lot of novels are termed as "coming of age", but there's something that really rings true about how James feels in his family, socially, and in himself that perfectly captures the last lingering rays of childhood and the fear of the unknown adult world that lies beyond. While the adult James looks back with rose tinted glasses at his old village and what is maybe the last summer he spent there, even those dreamy recollections are pre-echoed by some sort of anxiety or trepidation as to what might come next.

Everything about this idyllic country setting is rendered so beautifully, in such luscious, luxurious language that the everyday is elevated to something golden, untouchable, though somehow out of time, or behind glass. Falling in love bursts James's world right open, in many ways, but this obsession makes him withdrawn in other ways, pulling him away from the other anchors in his life, "ruining the life in front of him".

At a pre-launch event last month, Seán Hewitt said that he had wanted to explore what this kind of infatuation does to a person's imagination, and this idea is explored really interestingly in how the older narrator tells us how adult relationships, even his now failed marriage, paled to the vivid Technicolor of his time spent with Luke - and even at the time, he "was never really living, never inhabiting [his] days, because [he] saw them all as a prelude to something else". Love transforms James, but not in the way he might have thought, and Hewitt charts this on his interior landscape so poignantly.

For a novel so steeped in rapturous love, where every world drips with exquisite longing, it is also perfectly balanced, and even restrained, no more so than in the elegant, moving last pages that hit all the right notes, powerful without being overwrought, sweet while never being saccharine, nostalgic though tempered with reflection and reality. I can't praise Open, Heaven enough.

I thoroughly enjoyed Open, heaven. It really captured the naivety, doubts and insecurities of first love. A really mature insight into love between two boys. Great read

It's hard to articulate exactly what about this book got under my skin and stayed there, refusing to let go of me.

James is young, gay, and longs to escape the quiet country village he calls home. But he is too young to leave, and anyway his family needs him. Lonely and out of place he drifts through each day in the knowledge that he doesn't belong. Then Luke arrives. A little older, but also out of place in his own way. He has been sent to live on a farm with his aunt and uncle as his mother has left and his father is in prison. That summer, Luke and James meet. Over the next year they become part of one another's lives, and James falls in love in the intense, agonising way you do when it is the first time.

In the present, James returns to the village for a day. Just to look around. Just to be there. To sit with the destruction that this single year set in motion.

This is a masterful piece of work. Although it is short, this book leaves you shattered at the end, because every word of it feels so real. From the vivid description of an ordinary village to the wonder and pain of first love. It isn't a grand, hopeful story of finding a lost love or putting your life back together. It is raw and sad and wistful. I read it in less than a day because once I started I couldn't stop. I had to know, had to understand everything that had happened between these two people. What a book.

It is such a privilege to read a book like this.

Open Heaven by Sean Hewitt is a breathtakingly beautiful book. The writing is so lyrical and moving—it pulled me in from the start. There were moments that felt deeply familiar, especially as a gay man growing up, and I think many will relate to the emotional journey in this story. The characters are so lovable and real, and you can’t help but get attached to them. The book captures the quiet, sometimes painful beauty of coming into your own, and it left me feeling both heartbroken and hopeful. It’s a story that stays with you long after you’ve finished reading.

James, a shy 16 year old, lives with his parents and younger brother in a small village in the north of England. Lonely and aware his sexuality has isolated him from school friends, he’s made to help with an early morning milk round. Delivering to a nearby farm he meets Luke, who due to family circumstances has been sent to live there with his aunt and uncle.
Luke is bold, enigmatic and James falls deeply for him, but as the two boys grow closer he’s unsure of Luke’s feelings, as well as becoming increasingly resentful of family expectations.
Set over the course of one year this is a book about the gut-wrenching passion of first love and how it can shape the rest of your life.

Seán Hewitt has had considerable success as a poet, he has a real eye for nature and the changing seasons. This debut novel will deservedly further enhance his reputation.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Vintage for an ARC