Open, Heaven

Hewitt, a poet publishing his first novel, tells a coming-of-age story about a teenage boy's obsessive first love for another boy in a small English village, and the writing itself has split critics sharply. Admirers point to how the book treats adolescent desire with an almost devotional seriousness, refusing the usual ironic distance of the coming-out novel and instead rendering longing at full, unguarded intensity. Detractors counter that the lyricism tips into excess, that the prose reaches for transcendence more often than it earns it, leaving some scenes feeling overwrought rather than moving. Both readings are responding to the same quality: this is a novel staking everything on sincerity.