
Open, Heaven
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Sebastian Croft
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By:
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Seán Hewitt
About this listen
A stunning debut novel from the acclaimed young Irish poet Seán Hewitt, reminiscent of Garth Greenwell and Justin Torres in the intensity of its evocation of sexual awakening
Set in a remote village in the north of England, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year in which two teenage boys meet and transform each other’s lives.
James—a sheltered, shy sixteen-year-old—is alone in his newly discovered sexuality, full of an unruly desire but entirely inexperienced. As he is beginning to understand himself and his longings, he also realizes how his feelings threaten to separate him from his family and the rural community he has grown up in. He dreams of another life, fantasizing about what lies beyond the village’s leaf-ribboned boundaries, beyond his reach: autonomy, tenderness, sex. Then, in the autumn of 2002, he meets Luke, a slightly older boy, handsome, unkempt, who comes with a reputation for danger. Abandoned by his parents—his father imprisoned, and his mother having moved to France for another man—Luke has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle on their farm just outside the village. James is immediately drawn to him "like the pull a fire makes on the air, dragging things into it and blazing them into its hot, white centre," drawn to this boy who is beautiful and impulsive, charismatic, troubled. But underneath Luke’s bravado is a deep wound—a longing for the love of his father and for the stability of family life.
Open, Heaven is a novel about desire, yearning, and the terror of first love. With the striking economy and lyricism that animate his work as a poet, Hewitt has written a mesmerizing hymn to boyhood, sensuality, and love in all its forms. A truly exceptional debut.
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Critic reviews
"Seán Hewitt’s Open, Heaven blisses with the bright verdure of youth—blackbirds and blossoming hedges, wet hands held tight under buttery starlight. But Open, Heaven also courses with youth’s great agony, the cruelty that learning to love should be inexorably followed by learning to grieve its undoing. Hewitt's is a searching novel orbiting pleasure, loss, and the ecstatic release of both; which is to say it’s a novel about time. Which is to say it’s a novel about us."—Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!
“Seán Hewitt’s Open, Heaven is a striking debut novel from a richly gifted poet and memoirist: an intensely conjured portrayal of the hopeless, all-consuming love of one lonely teenager for another and how it marks him for life. As in Hewitt’s poetry, the beauties of nature erupt throughout, seeming to express the things the two boys cannot voice and the cumulative effect is as bittersweet and elegiac as birdsong.”—Patrick Gale, author of A Place Called Winter
“Hewitt writes with such tenderness and grace; in Open, Heaven, beauty, longing and the natural world form a single chord that strikes the heart of the reader with love’s impossibility. The heightened, poetic state of adolescence is perfectly captured here.”—Anne Enright, author of The Wren, the Wren
Editorial Review
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Story
The Kenner siblings are at odds. Jenn is a harried mom struggling under the weight of family obligations. Fred is a novelist who can’t write, maybe because she’s lost faith in storytelling itself. Jude is a recovering corporate lawyer with her own story to tell, and a grudge against her former favorite sister, Fred. George, the baby, is estranged from his wife and harboring both a secret about his former employer and an ill-advised crush on one of his sisters’ friends. Gathered after a major loss, each sibling needs the others more than ever—if only they could trust each other.
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Tolstoy was wrong
- By tallybroom on 06-01-25
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The Compound
- A Novel
- By: Aisling Rawle
- Narrated by: Lucy Boynton
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Lily—a bored, beautiful twenty-something—wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door. Cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave: why would she, when the world outside is falling apart?
By: Aisling Rawle
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Friends of the Museum
- A Novel
- By: Heather McGowan
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 19 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Diane Schwebe, the director of a major New York museum, is awakened in the early morning by a text message from the museum’s lawyer, it is the start of a twenty-four hour roller-coaster ride. Diane has sacrificed many things in her life to help the fading institution stave off irrelevance and financial ruin. In this battle, she’s surrounded by her stalwart supporters and a motley assortment of museum employees, each on the precipice of collapse or revelation.
By: Heather McGowan
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What Will People Think?
- A Novel
- By: Sara Hamdan
- Narrated by: Reem Edan
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Equal parts funny and tender, What Will People Think? is a heart-bursting exploration of what it means to discover and embrace the hidden parts of yourself, and how love in all forms can make you whole.
By: Sara Hamdan
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Blonde Dust
- By: Tatiana de Rosnay
- Narrated by: Caroline Hewitt
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Pauline, a young chambermaid who works at the legendary Mapes Hotel in Reno, Nevada, is asked to step in for a colleague and clean Suite 614. Although she was told the rooms were empty, a dazed, sleepy woman appears before her. This is Mrs. Miller, aka Marilyn Monroe, whose stay in Reno coincides with the breakdown of her marriage to Arthur Miller and the filming of what was to be her last film, The Misfits.
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Bad Nature
- A Novel
- By: Ariel Courage
- Narrated by: Cia Court
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Hester is diagnosed with terminal cancer on her fortieth birthday, she knows immediately what she must do: abandon her possessions and drive to California to kill her estranged father. With no friends or family tying her to the life she’s built in New York City, she quits her wildly lucrative job in corporate law and starts driving west. She hasn’t made it far when she runs into John, an environmental activist in need of a ride to different superfund sites across the United States.
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Sad life, sad ending
- By C. R. Choate on 05-17-25
By: Ariel Courage
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The Lost Masterpiece
- A Novel
- By: B. A. Shapiro
- Narrated by: Lucy Rayner, Christine Lakin, Hannah Curtis, and others
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Stretching from the late-nineteenth century to the present day, The Lost Masterpiece is wrapped around an enigmatic and powerful painting, Party on the Seine. Stolen by the Nazis. Believed to be destroyed for almost a century. Possibly haunted by the anguished spirit of Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot. Survivor of a flood, an earthquake and a fire when all the other artworks around it were destroyed. What secrets does it hold? What power?
By: B. A. Shapiro
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Vanishing World
- A Novel
- By: Sayaka Murata
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
As a girl, Amane realizes with horror that her parents “copulated” in order to bring her into the world, rather than using artificial insemination, which became the norm in the mid-twentieth century. Amane strives to get away from what she considers an indoctrination in this strange “system” by her mother, but her infatuations with both anime characters and real people have a sexual force that is undeniable.
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Excellent
- By Chris Reich on 04-28-25
By: Sayaka Murata
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Somadina
- By: Akwaeke Emezi
- Narrated by: Nene Nwoko, Akwaeke Emezi
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Somadina and her twin brother, Jayaike, are practically the same person: they finish each other's sentences and make each other whole. When the twins come of age, their magical gifts begin to develop, but while Jayaike's powers enchant, Somadina's cause fear to ripple through her town. Always an outsider, Somadina now faces blatant—and dangerous—hostility. And things go from bad to worse when her brother—the one person she trusted—vanishes. Somadina knows that no matter the dangers, she must track him down.
By: Akwaeke Emezi
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Notes from a Regicide
- By: Isaac Fellman
- Narrated by: Avi Roque
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Griffon Keming’s second parents saved him from his abusive family. They taught him how to be trans, paid for his transition, and tried to love him as best they could. But Griffon’s new parents had troubles of their own—both were deeply scarred by the lives they lived before Griffon, the struggles they faced to become themselves, and the failed revolution that drove them from their homeland. When they died, they left an unfillable hole in his heart.
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Spectacular work from a great author.
- By Meghan Elison on 04-24-25
By: Isaac Fellman
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The Correspondent
- A Novel
- By: Virginia Evans
- Narrated by: Maggi-Meg Reed, Jane Oppenheimer, Carly Robins, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.
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Phenomenal Story Plus Performances!
- By M. Ryder on 05-21-25
By: Virginia Evans
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The Family Recipe
- A Novel
- By: Carolyn Huynh
- Narrated by: Vyvy Nguyen, David Lee Huynh
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Duc Tran, the eccentric founder of the Vietnamese sandwich chain Duc’s Sandwiches, has decided to retire. No one has heard from his wife, Evelyn, in two decades. She abandoned the family without a trace, and clearly doesn’t want anything to do with Duc, the business, or their kids. But the money has to go to someone. With the help of the shady family lawyer, Duc informs his five estranged adult children that to receive their inheritance, his four daughters must revitalize run-down shops in old-school Little Saigon locations across America: Houston, San Jose, New Orleans, and Philadelphia.
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Finding yourself
- By Lindsay on 05-23-25
By: Carolyn Huynh
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The Imagined Life
- A Novel
- By: Andrew Porter
- Narrated by: Lee Osorio
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Steven Mills has reached a crossroads. His wife and son have left, and they may not return. Which leaves him determined to find out what happened to his own father, a brilliant, charismatic professor who disappeared in 1984 when Steve was twelve, on a wave of ignominy. As Steve drives up the coast of California, seeking out his father’s friends, family members, and former colleagues, the novel offers us tantalizing glimpses into Steve’s childhood—his parents’ legendary pool parties, the black-and-white films on the backyard projector, secrets shared with his closest friend.
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Good writing
- By Suzanna on 04-27-25
By: Andrew Porter
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Francine's Spectacular Crash and Burn
- A Novel
- By: Renee Swindle
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Francine's Spectacular Crash and Burn is a bighearted novel that will wiggle its way into the heart of every listener. It follows Francine Stevenson. whose life revolved around her anxious agoraphobic mother—her abrupt passing rocks Francine to her core and sends her into a tailspin of depression. She copes by rummaging through her mother’s assortment of pills, dancing manically at night to the disco she and her mother enjoyed while keeping up appearances at work during daylight hours.
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"I was sad when it ended".
- By Susan Carpendale on 05-14-25
By: Renee Swindle
The longing and yearning for love and something more that takes place in the book!
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What a writer!
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