Will I love The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears?

I appreciated the quiet depth of this novel and its thoughtful portrayal of an immigrant neighborhood in Washington, D.C.

The story explores everyday relationships between immigrants and longtime residents as a community slowly changes around them, and captures subtle moments of connection and tension that arise when people from different histories share the same streets.

Small, revealing encounters across cultures and religions that gradually shape the identity of a neighborhood are hard to chronicle in fiction. I admired this author’s nuance and insight in narrating her characters.

Mengistu poignantly demonstrates to me the alienation that can and does haunt the migrant over time, providing deep insights into many of the things that make us human.

I found this novel highly accessible and masterly in its panoramic view of an Ethiopian immigrant’s experiences in the US. An immigrant whose life is changed in many ways but remains unchanged in others after many years in the US.