The Heavens by Sandra Newman

read by Cassandra Campbell

The power of this story is the compelling writing—and it’s a very powerful story. Despite the stupid cover, which makes it look like a YA fantasy romance (it’s not!!!), and despite the title, which someone ought to be fired for because it manages to be both deceptive and non-descriptive. This story is so much better than it needs to be, and so much better than I expected when I picked it up. I just wanted a good time-travel romp; what I got was much deeper, deeply satisfying, both emotionally and intellectually.

The story starts when Kate and Ben meet at a party at a rich girl’s uncle’s apartment in New York, attended by idealistic young political activists at the turn of the millennium. They hit it off right away, almost in spite of themselves. Ben isn’t quite looking to fall for someone, and Kate is super quirky, to the point of not quite seeming to live in the same reality as everyone else. But chemistry is chemistry.

What Ben is slow to realize is the degree to which Kate’s reality differs from his. She has dreams of another life—a life in which she’s the mistress of an Elizabethan nobleman. And she takes these dreams very seriously. How could she not, when sometimes, when she wakes up from them, reality has changed? It might be a small change, like suddenly there are blinds instead of curtains on her bedroom windows. But nobody else ever remembers things the way she does, or seems to realize that anything was ever different. 

Gradually the changes get bigger and bigger, and always, Kate is the only one who remembers how things were before. She comes to the realization that she actually is traveling to the past in her dreams, and that small things she does there are changing the future.

As the changes become bigger and bigger, and the world keeps changing—always for the worse—it becomes harder and harder for Kate to keep her grip on the current state of things. And when she can’t remember who the president is, or why people allow so many billboards and cars all over the place, Ben and her friends and family increasingly see her as mentally ill and out of touch with reality.

And maybe that’s actually the case…? Is this actually a time travel story, or just a story about someone with a remarkably detailed structure of delusions? Could 2001 have been entirely different if Kate hadn’t decided to advise an acquaintance to leave London during a plague year, and then put a good word for him in her lover’s ear? Or is that as ridiculous as it would sound to you or me in the real world?

All of this would be fascinating in any case. It’s just such a good story premise. But what makes it truly compelling for me is the way Sandra Newman writes. 

She’s just so good at depicting what happens between couples when they argue, what goes on in their heads and how they try to express it and what happens when that goes wrong. She paints such a clear and realistic picture of how people who think they are very sensible and attuned to what matters can actually completely miss seeing the elephant trampling all over the room. She’s a master of the telling emotional detail, and writes it in brilliant, insightful, and unsentimental strokes.

I walked away from it in a daze. Verdict: read this book.