The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

This sprawling novel begins with a skeleton found in a well and then flashes back several decades, to the town of Pottstown PA, where the reader slowly discovers the origin of this mysterious body. The story is mostly set in Chicken Hill, a neighborhood that is mostly populated with black and Jewish residents and much of it revolves around the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. It is owned and operated by a very kind Jewish woman and her equally kind, theater-operating husband. There are many dark secrets on Chicken Hill, along with rampant racism. McBride manages to coax a wonderful, complex tale out of this place and time, proving his absolute mastery at story-telling and plotting.

Sorry to say this novel didn't work well for me at all. It would almost draw me in with bits of intriguing story and then smother me in wordy repetitious passages where I'd find myself turning a page without having taken in the content. It reminded me of listening to a jazz composition where every so often I'd be engaged in what felt like music, but a lot of the time I'd hear only noise. There are wonderful story elements in here, but I had little patience for the way the novel was put together. I've had similar issues with McBride before, and I think I'm just going to say that stylistically he's not for me, and move on.

What a storyteller! McBride’s book is about the history of African American and Jewish residents in Chicken Hill a neighbourhood of Pottstown, Pennsylvania. It’s one of those books where finding a flaw is virtually impossible, it’s not only an extraordinary story but the writing is superb. Wisely, I chose the audio version with a fabulous reading by Dominic Hoffman.

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store is the kind of book to lose yourself in. Written by a storyteller at the top of his game, James McBride's account of the neglected community of Chicken Hill during the 1930s, when it was where immigrants and Jewish people landed before moving into one of Pottstown's more acceptable neighborhoods, and where Black Americans always lived. The story begins and ends with a body in a well, yet this isn't a mystery novel, but an expansive book about the many people who called Chicken Hill home. If you're looking for a tightly-constructed plot, this isn't the book for you; this one ranges here and there, while remaining centered on the small grocery store at the center of the community, run by a small Jewish show more woman who refuses to be quiet and whose compassion is legendary. For all this, McBride's story never forgets the harshness of the world in which these characters live. It's wonderfully told and while it seems to wander off into side stories, they all work together to make this book something remarkable. show less

Finished The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by William McBride.
This was a fun book to read, not necessarily in the plot line of racism, murder, and underhanded business dealings, but in the language used by the author to convey this history of Pottstown, PA, where in the 1930's, the Jewish and the Blacks, both scorned by the wealthier white community, forged a symbiotic relationship in order to survive. McBride slowly developed the crucial events by introducing multiple community characters to further the storyline. And characters they were : Moshe, Chona, Nate, Dodo, Fatty and Big Soap, Rusty, Miggy, Paper, Snooks, Doc and Monkey Pants. Through the portraits of this varied group, McBride also presents a microcosm of America. Himself a show more son of an interracial marriage, McBride pays homage to the Polish immigrant grandmother he never knew, creating a story of a woman beloved by her community. After beginning with the Hurricane Agnes destruction of Pottstown in 1972, the narrative then flashes back 47 years to the vision that Moshe Ludlow had of Moses and decides to bring together this misfit community through the bookings of big band and swing orchestras to his auditorium. I recommend going back to this first chapter after finishing the book. Highly recommend this and other works of this creative voice.

Lines:

Chona :
now, at age seventeen, had developed into quite a package. Despite her foot and limp, she was a quiet beauty, with a gorgeous nose and sweet lips, ample breasts, a sizable derriere that poked against the drab, loose-fitting woolen skirt, and eyes that shone with gaiety and mirth.

“That woman,” his cousin Isaac once grumbled, “is a real Bulgarian. Whenever they feel like working, they sit and wait till the feeling passes. They can’t pour a glass of water without making a party of it.”

There was a silent pool in Nate Timblin, a stirring that did not invite foolishness, a quiet that covered a kind of tempest.

“Light is only possible through dialogue between cultures, not through rejection of one or the other.”

Paper—whose smooth dark chocolate brown skin, perky breasts, slim buttocks, and wild cornrowed hair was appended by her running mouth that could keep neither secret nor food, for she ate like a horse but never gained an ounce—was a laundress who held court inside the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store every Saturday.

Everybody knew Bernice had the kind of face that would make a man wire home for money.

Chona had smelled not a hot dog but the future, a future in which devices that fit in one’s pocket and went zip, zap, and zilch delivered a danger far more seductive and powerful than any hot dog, a device that children of the future would clamor for and become addicted to, a device that fed them their oppression disguised as free thought. show less

James McBride's 381-page novel The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store combines elements of group comedy, cultural history, thriller, and love story. The story takes place in Pottstown, Pennsylvania's dilapidated Chicken Hill neighborhood, where African Americans and Jewish immigrants coexist and work side by side. The book tells the story of the people who live in Chicken Hill, how they make ends meet despite being marginalized by the larger white population, and how the country is changing quickly, as witnessed by those who were formerly enslaved and others who have recently arrived.

The author's prose style is elegant, and his development of individual characters is exceptional, providing a realism for his story that few novelists attain. show more I enjoyed this novel as much as his wonderful Good Lord Bird, and I look forward to more novels from James McBride. show less

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store - McBride
4.5 stars

“Light is only possible through dialogue between cultures, not through rejection of one or the other.”

This book had so much flavor. It’s kosher and soul food. The neighborhood of Chicken Hill pulses with activity. The overlapping, intersecting lives of the characters in this book reminded me of the tribal characters in Erdrich’s The Night Watchman. In McBride’s book there’s a mingling of tribes. It’s a mingling of marginalized people, immigrant people; the excluded people. Much of the mingling happens at the Grocery Store.

The book begins with the discovery of a skeleton in the bottom of a well. That’s a dark beginning and the book has no lack of injustice and human show more suffering. However, the harsh reality can’t compete with the humor and the human kindness. I enjoyed the quirky characters, their ramshackle environment, and their underhanded victory. Despite McBride’s prophetic foreshadowing of a bleak 21st century, (Chona’s whiff of a hotdog scented future), I was feeling optimistic as I read the last page.

I had a limited time library ebook of this title. I was propping up my eyelids to finish it the night before it vanished from my kindle. I will need to buy a copy so I can reread. I need to go back to see how all the little puzzle pieces fit together. I also miss these characters now that they have disappeared. It would be good to visit them again. show less