I am in awe of Thrity Umrigar. I enjoyed her previous book, The Space Between Us, but The Weight of Heaven positively blew me away. Even though this book drips with sadness and grief and made me want to throw it against the wall toward the end, I still give this one five stars because…well, WOW.
When I read, I like to flip up the bottom corner of pages where there are passages, phrases, ideas that I like or that impress me in some way or that make me want to talk about them. If you look at my copy of this book, practically every other page is dogged like this. From Ellie’s realization of the inanity in saying “Have a nice day” (p. 21) to perfectly illustrative phrases like, “Her hands shook like birds in a rainstorm” (p. 234) , The Weight of Heaven makes me wish my book club were talking about this book RIGHT NOW.
So, what’s it about? It is the story of an American couple (Ellie and Frank) whose 7-year-old son has died, leaving them crippled with grief. (And the grief, oh my god, the GRIEF. If you read this book, do not attempt to read it on your commuter train, or you will find yourself fighting tears at 8:00 a.m., surrounded by strangers.) Actually, I’m not sure I could read this if I had kids. I don’t know if my heart could take it. Anyway, Frank’s company offers him a position managing the company’s India office, and he and Ellie decide to go. Frank’s business is more complicated than he thought when he took the job, with clashing cultural and economic ideas between himself (and his counterparts back in America) and the impoverished workforce and local residents – a situation that makes him hate India and everything about it; whereas Ellie finds friendship and fulfillment in volunteering in the community and feels precisely the opposite. As all of this is playing out, they (and, particularly, Frank) take an interest in their housekeepers’ young son, which adds a new layer of cultural and economic tension to their lives and to their marriage.
The Weight of Heaven is well-written and fascinating and impossible to put down. Downright excellent, actually.
I use Post-it flags rather than dog-earing the corners, but I know what you mean. When I finished “Tolstoy Lied” last year, I noticed there was practically a whole pad’s worth of Post-it flags on the pages of that book. (Did you ever read that one, by the way? It’s one of my favorites, though most of the people I recommended it to were surprisingly “meh” about it.)