WATERSTONES FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH FOR OCTOBER 2024
THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER
BARACK OBAMA’S BOOK OF THE YEAR PICK
AMAZON.COM NO.1 BOOK OF THE YEAR
‘I loved this book’ BONNIE GARMUS
‘A generous, compassionate book about the power of love and community’ LOUISE KENNEDY
‘I can’t recommend this one highly enough ‘ HARLAN COBEN
‘THIS is his best book’ ANN PATCHETT
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighbourhood where Jewish immigrants and African Americans lived side by side through the 1920s and ’30s.
In this novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them, James McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community – heaven and earth – that sustain us.
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Reviews
McBride is an acknowledged master of high-resolution historical fiction, peppered with wit and insight
A murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel . . . a charming, smart, heart-blistering and heart-healing novel
This book teaches me and gives me hope! It makes me want to be an ally of all that is good, deep, and just. Do yourself a favour, get lost in it, it's story telling at its finest
I loved this book. An intricate weaving of race and prejudice told with heart and hope
It's hard to imagine anyone being able to write to the caliber of Toni Morrison and Edward P. Jones, but James McBride does just that
I keep thinking every time I read one of his books, 'That's his best book.' No. THIS is his best book
If chicken soup is balm for the soul, then James McBride's eighth book, set in 1930s Chicken Hill, a neighbourhood in a small town in Pennsylvania that is home to Jewish, black and other immigrant people, is its literary equivalent
When I met James McBride, I felt like I'd had coffee with a hysterically funny 21st century Leo Tolstoy . . . His excellence in the art of storytelling defies gravity. He writes about deep American wounds with love, rage and a sense of wit . . . If James is one of the most influential artists in America, then there is great hope for America
Shouldn't we just get it over with and declare McBride this decade's Great American Novelist?
Funny, tender, knockabout, gritty and suspenseful, McBride's microcosmic, socially critiquing and empathic novel dynamically celebrates difference, kindness, ingenuity and the force that compels us to move heaven and earth to help each other
This is one of those novels that becomes a part of you. It's a great book. Every character is rich; every detail is rich. I can't recommend this one highly enough
With his eccentric, larger-than-life characters and outrageous scenes of spliced tragedy and comedy, "Dickensian" is not too grand a description for his novels, but the term is ultimately too condescending and too Anglican. The melodrama that McBride spins is wholly his own, steeped in our country's complex racial tensions and alliances. Surely, the time is not too far distant when we'll refer to other writers' hypnotically entertaining stories as McBridean . . . We all need - we all deserve - this vibrant, love-affirming novel that bounds over any difference that claims to separate us
Epic . . . Glorious. An uplifting tale of kindness and community
The interlocking destinies of McBride's characters make for tense, absorbing drama and, at times, warm, humane comedy. . . If it's possible for America to have a poet laureate, why can't James McBride be its storyteller-in-chief?
McBride looks squarely at savage truths about race and prejudice, but he also insists on humour and hope. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is one of the best novels I've read this year
Wonderful . . . McBride is a fabulous talent, and expertly marshals a vast array of characters with a polyphony of voices
McBride entertains us and shows us both the beauty and the ugliness of humanity
Revolutionary
A modern-day Mark Twain
McBride's pages burst with life . . . This endlessly rich saga highlights the different ways in which people look out for one another
I loved this. A generous, compassionate book about the power of love and community against corruption and bigotry. It's also a lot of fun
Mesmerizing, moving, almost magical . . . a miracle of storytelling that will leave you laughing and crying