In his breathtaking debut novel, Seán Hewitt crafts a narrative that pulses with the ache of adolescent desire, the weight of secrecy, and the transformative power of first love. Open, Heaven brings the same lyrical intensity and careful observation that characterized Hewitt’s acclaimed poetry collection Tongues of Fire and his memoir All Down Darkness Wide, but here applies it to fiction with devastating effect. Set in the isolated village of Thornmere in northern England during 2002, the novel follows sixteen-year-old James as he navigates the complexities of his awakening sexuality and encounters Luke, a slightly older boy who will irrevocably alter the course of his life.
What begins as a somewhat familiar coming-of-age story quickly reveals itself to be something far more profound: a meditation on the nature of desire itself, on the boundaries between different forms of love, and on how we construct our identities through the prism of those we long for.
The Poetry of Prose
Hewitt’s background as a poet is evident on every page. His prose possesses a lyrical economy that transforms ordinary moments into occasions of luminous significance. Consider this description of a bonfire:
“The bonfire went up easily – we doused it in petrol first, and all it took was a few lit bundles of hay touched to the base before there was a quick sound, like a flapping sheet, and suddenly the flames seemed to fling themselves out of the dark air and into being. They were furious, leaping things, wild and frenetic. It was mesmerising, the way the mouths of the fire hurled fire forwards out of themselves.”
This heightened attention to sensory experience creates a rich backdrop against which the emotional drama of the novel unfolds. Hewitt’s sentences shimmer with yearning and a kind of restrained ecstasy, capturing the overwhelming intensity of adolescent feeling without ever becoming sentimental or overwrought.
Navigating Desire and Identity
At its heart, Open, Heaven is a novel about the simultaneously liberating and terrifying experience of discovering one’s sexuality. James is a painfully self-aware protagonist, constantly analyzing his own desires and wrestling with the gap between his interior life and the expectations of the world around him. His internal monologues about his feelings for Luke are some of the most powerful passages in the book:
“I thought that, if I ever did receive it, it would have to be furtive, shadowed, always stitched with a sort of danger, the possibility of violent denial. If I met one of them after class, down a dark path, or if they cornered me in the empty showers, maybe I could break them, but the breaking would not last long, and I would be alone again, even more alone than before. Still, I could not stop wanting it.”
Hewitt’s portrayal of James’s sexuality avoids cliché at every turn. It is neither a simple coming-out narrative nor a tragic gay love story, but rather an exploration of the complex interplay between desire, identity, self-knowledge, and self-deception.
A Study in Contrast
The chemistry between James and Luke propels the narrative forward. Where James is introspective, cautious, and bound by family obligations, Luke is impulsive, seemingly fearless, and essentially rootless. Yet Hewitt gradually reveals the vulnerabilities beneath Luke’s bravado—his abandonment by his parents, his yearning for family stability, and his own unacknowledged desires.
One of the novel’s greatest strengths is its resistance to simplistic character dynamics. Neither boy fully understands the other, and their relationship exists in a hazy space of partial revelations and miscommunications. This creates a believable portrait of teenage intimacy, where even the most intense connections are shadowed by confusion and uncertainty.
The Village as Character
Thornmere itself emerges as a significant presence in the novel. Hewitt’s descriptions of the village—its canals, fields, woods, and hidden hollows—create a vivid sense of place while also serving as an emotional landscape:
“Thornmere’s outer reaches were crossed over by two motorway viaducts – people were always passing by, but not stopping. As far as I was concerned, it was nowhere’s junction and no one’s destination.”
The village represents both confinement and security, while the world beyond symbolizes freedom but also danger. This tension between staying and leaving, between safety and desire, underscores James’s emotional journey throughout the novel.
Framed Narrative and Time’s Flow
The novel employs a framed narrative, opening and closing with an adult James returning to Thornmere twenty years later. This structure allows Hewitt to explore the lasting impact of first love and to examine how memory shapes our understanding of pivotal moments in our lives. The adult James’s reflections on his teenage experiences add layers of poignancy and complexity to the central narrative:
“Time runs faster backwards. The years – long, arduous, and uncertain when taken one by one – unspool quickly, turning liquid, so one summer becomes a shimmering light that, almost as soon as it appears in the mind, is subsumed into a dark winter…”
This meditation on time’s passage and the persistence of memory gives the novel a haunting quality that lingers long after the final page.
Where the Novel Falls Short
Despite its many strengths, Open, Heaven occasionally suffers from an overreliance on interior monologue at the expense of dramatic action. Some readers may find James’s constant self-analysis excessive, particularly in the middle sections of the novel where his ruminations sometimes delay the forward momentum of the plot.
Additionally, while the novel’s supporting characters—James’s parents, his younger brother Eddie, Luke’s aunt and uncle—are sensitively drawn, they occasionally feel slightly underdeveloped compared to the richly realized protagonists. This is particularly noticeable with Eddie, whose illness serves as an important plot point but whose inner life remains somewhat opaque.
The novel’s ending, while beautifully written, might strike some readers as too ambiguous, leaving several narrative threads unresolved. However, this open-endedness could also be viewed as a deliberate artistic choice that mirrors the messiness of real-life emotional experiences.
Comparisons and Context
Readers familiar with contemporary LGBTQ+ fiction will notice resonances with Garth Greenwell’s What Belongs to You and Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain in Hewitt’s unflinching examination of desire and the relationship between sexuality and place. Like those novels, Open, Heaven refuses easy categorization as “gay fiction,” instead using queer experience as a lens through which to explore universal themes of longing, identity, and belonging.
The novel also bears comparison to André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name in its lush evocation of first love and its attention to the sensory details of desire. However, Hewitt’s northern English setting and his protagonist’s working-class background create a very different atmosphere from Aciman’s privileged Italian idyll.
Final Verdict
Open, Heaven marks Seán Hewitt as a significant new voice in literary fiction. The novel succeeds brilliantly in capturing the exquisite pain and pleasure of adolescent desire, the complex interplay between sexuality and identity, and the lasting impact of first love.
Hewitt’s gifts as a poet serve him well in fiction, allowing him to create a narrative that is at once lyrically beautiful and emotionally precise. Despite minor flaws, this is a remarkable achievement—a debut novel of unusual maturity and depth that announces the arrival of a major literary talent.
For readers who appreciate nuanced explorations of sexuality, exquisitely crafted prose, and emotionally resonant coming-of-age narratives, Open, Heaven is an essential addition to their bookshelves.
Open, Heaven will appeal particularly to fans of:
- What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell
- Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman
- Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
- Real Life by Brandon Taylor
- All Down Darkness Wide (Hewitt’s memoir)
The novel confirms what readers of Hewitt’s poetry collection Tongues of Fire and his memoir All Down Darkness Wide already knew: that he is a writer of exceptional talent whose work navigates the complex territories of desire, memory, and identity with rare sensitivity and insight.
