Hardcover, 272 pages
English language
Published Jan. 6, 2019 by Granta Books.
New York, 2000. Kate and Ben meet at a party and immediately fall in love. It is the first year of the new millennium, the first year without a war anywhere in the world. The United Nations has just planted its flag on Mars, and a Green Party senator is about to become the first female president of the United States. Kate falls asleep, knowing that she is loved.
London, 1593. Kate wakes as Emilia - the mistress of a nobleman - and finds the plague at her door. Afflicted by premonitions of a burnt and lifeless city, she sets out to save the world. Each decision she makes will change her life with Ben forever.
The story of love and alternate universes, madness and time travel, The Heavens is a dream bound up in a strange awakening; it is a novel of what we have lost, and what we …
New York, 2000. Kate and Ben meet at a party and immediately fall in love. It is the first year of the new millennium, the first year without a war anywhere in the world. The United Nations has just planted its flag on Mars, and a Green Party senator is about to become the first female president of the United States. Kate falls asleep, knowing that she is loved.
London, 1593. Kate wakes as Emilia - the mistress of a nobleman - and finds the plague at her door. Afflicted by premonitions of a burnt and lifeless city, she sets out to save the world. Each decision she makes will change her life with Ben forever.
The story of love and alternate universes, madness and time travel, The Heavens is a dream bound up in a strange awakening; it is a novel of what we have lost, and what we might yet be able to save.
I love this book and wanted to reread it almost immediately after I first read it, although maybe choosing to read it again as 2020 rolled into 2021 wasn't the wisest idea I've had. If it was one sentence? Humans spoil everything through self-aggrandizement, even when they don't mean to, but lyrical and with time travel. It's a gorgeous book but it is fundamentally sad, so choose your timing carefully.
