It took me quite a while to get into The Discovery of Heaven. Which is to say, about 300 pages; quite the investment, I guess. To be fair, it is a pretty long book, so I still had a lot left after I got into it. I suppose it's an argument for why the rules of the list are important, since this is one I would have been very tempted to give up on, but I'm very glad to have read it.
I won't give a plot summary, because a) it doesn't really matter, and b) it would make it sound like a soap opera. Seriously. Ultimately, it wasn't the plot that really interested me anyway.
The Discovery of Heaven is another novel that explores questions about what makes life worth living. There's a lot more going on in the novel, of course, but I was really struck by the places where it seems to ask "is life worth it?" and perhaps more interestingly "is there a point when life stops being worth it, and if so, what then?"
I'm fascinated by novels that conclude sometimes that perhaps the answer is no to the first question and yes to the second, at least in some instances. This could feel very bleak, but in some ways it's very empowering. The answer to me is always yes to the first, but knowing that is a choice, an active commitment to certain values that I hold rather than a default position is empowering.
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