Open, Heaven
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Summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
Set in the English countryside, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year as two teenage boys meet and transform each other’s lives.
On the cusp of adulthood, James dreams of another life far away from his small village. Beholden to the expectations of home and family, his burgeoning desire – an ache for autonomy, tenderness and sex – threatens to unravel his shy exterior.
Then he meets Luke. Unkempt and handsome, charismatic and impulsive, he has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle on a nearby farm. Luke comes with a reputation for danger, yet underneath his bravado lie anxieties and hopes of his own.
As the seasons pass, and the pair form an ever-changing bond, James falls into a terrifying first love that will transform his life forever. Enthralling and richly immersive, Open, Heaven is a debut novel about the freedom of youth, the sacrifices of friendship, and the possibilities of love in all its forms.
‘It’s a novel about us’ KAVEH AKBAR
‘Hewitt writes with such tenderness and grace’ ANNE ENRIGHT
‘A beautiful novel about how a first love can shape a whole life’
HELEN MACDONALD
‘Open, Heaven does what the very best coming of age stories do’
MICHAEL MAGEE
‘Gorgeous…thrums with hidden love and concealed truths’
ANDREW McMILLAN
‘Intensely conjured…as bittersweet and elegiac as birdsong’
PATRICK GALE
© Seán Hewitt 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025
Reviews
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, Booker Prize-winning author of The Wren, The Wren
