Heft: A Novel

by Liz Moore

Overview

"A stunningly sad and heroically hopeful tale…This is a beautiful novel about relationships of the most makeshift kind." —O, The Oprah Magazine

Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and hasn’t left his rambling Brooklyn home in a decade. Twenty miles away, in Yonkers, seventeen-year-old Kel Keller navigates life as the poor kid in a rich school and pins his hopes on what seems like a promising baseball career. The link between this unlikely pair is Kel’s mother, Charlene, a former student of Arthur’s. Told with warmth and intelligence through Arthur and Kel’s own quirky and lovable voices, Heft is the story of two improbable heroes whose connection transforms both their lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393343885
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/04/2012
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	231,265
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 5.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Liz Moore is the author of the acclaimed novel Heft. A winner of the 2014 Rome Prize in Literature, she lives in Philadelphia.

What People are Saying About This

Russell Banks

This is the real deal, Liz Moore is the real deal — she's written a novel that will stick with you long after you've finished it.

Ann Hood

In Heft, Liz Moore creates a cast of vulnerable, lonely misfits that will break your heart and then make it soar. What a terrific novel!

Mary Gordon

Heft is a work that radiantly combines compassion and a clear eyed vision. This is a novel of rare originality and sophistication.

Colum McCann

A suspenseful, restorative novel from one of our fine young voices.

Editorial Reviews

In Heft, Liz Moore creates a cast of vulnerable, lonely misfits that will break your heart and then make it soar. What a terrific novel!

Ann Hood

Heft is a work that radiantly combines compassion and a clear-eyed vision. This is a novel of rare originality and sophistication.

Mary Gordon

This is the real deal, Liz Moore is the real deal—she's written a novel that will stick with you long after you've finished it.

Russell Banks

A suspenseful, restorative novel from one of our fine young voices.

Colum McCann

Every once in a while, you read a book with such well-written, memorable characters that you know you’re going to remember them forever…Heft is a wonderful oddball of a book. I loved it.

Jennifer Weiner

This is not a novel with a happy ending, and that’s a good thing. Moore doesn’t tie her story up in a pretty package and hand it to the reader with care, but artfully acknowledges in the end that some heavy loads cannot easily be left behind.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Moore’s writing is clear, persuasive, and totally engaging, bringing her characters to life in all their sweet, quirky glory.

Boston Globe

Tender, thoughtful.

New York Times Book Review

[Moore] writes with compassion and emotional insight but resists sentimentality…Heft leads to hope.

People

Few novelists of recent memory have put our bleak isolation into words as clearly as Liz Moore does in her new novel.

San Francisco Chronicle

Heft achieves real poignancy…The warmth, the humanity and the hope in this novel make it compelling and pleasurable.

Washington Post

Moore’s characters are lovingly drawn…A truly original voice.

The New Yorker

This is not a novel with a happy ending, and that’s a good thing. Moore doesn’t tie her story up in a pretty package and hand it to the reader with care, but artfully acknowledges in the end that some heavy loads cannot easily be left behind.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune

A bittersweet novel, Heft is peopled by men and women so isolated by their fear or rejection, they’ve ceased to seek meaningful connections.

Philadelphia Inquirer

Arthur Opp is heartbreaking. A 58-year old former professor of literature, he weighs 550 lbs., hasn’t left his Brooklyn apartment in years and is acutely attuned to both the painful and analgesic dimensions of his self-imposed solitude. Kel Keller, a handsome and popular high school athlete whose mother drinks too much to take care of him or even herself, faces his own wrenching struggles. The pair, apparently connected only by a slender thread, at first seem unlikely as co-narrators and protagonists of this novel, but they both become genuine heroes as their separate journeys through loneliness finally intersect. Though Moore’s narrative is often deeply sad, it is never maudlin. She writes with compassion and emotional insight but resists sentimentality , briskly moving her plot forward, building suspense and empathy. Most impressive is her ability to thoroughly inhabit the minds of Arthur and Kel; these are robust, complex characters to champion, not pity. The single word of the title is obviously a reference to Arthur’s morbid obesity, but it also alludes to the weight of true feelings and the courage needed to confront them. Heft leads to hope.”

People Magazine

Moore (The Words of Every Song) taps the fascinating psyche of the morbidly obese in her second novel, a stout volume with a split narrative between corpulent recluse Arthur Opp and Kel Keller, an admired high school baseball player. Though slow to start, Moore succeeds in creating an insightful page-turner that seeks to demystify archetypal characters. Arthur is a reclusive, independently wealthy ex-professor who occupies the lower floors of his family home. A sporadic correspondence with former student Charlene sustains him for years until her surprise phone call pushes him to rejoin society. Charlene is the common link between Arthur and Kel, who narrates the book’s latter half and who, despite his apparent charmed existence, actually leads something of a double life caring for his alcoholic mother. As the story slowly unfolds, the importance of the connections between the three becomes increasingly evident. The writing is quirky, sometimes to a fault, yet original, but the diptych structure is less successful, as the respective first-person narrators are sometimes indistinct. Regardless, Moore’s second novel wears its few kinks well. Agent: Sterling Lord Literistic. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

Morbidly obese, 58-year-old shut-in Arthur Opp's only real contact with the outside world comes through his extended written correspondence with fellow misfit and former student Charlene Turner, 20 years his junior. When Arthur thinks Charlene might come back into his life, he finds the courage to let a cleaning service into his home and slowly befriends 19-year-old maid Yolanda. The novel alternates between the voices of Arthur and Charlene's 18-year-old son, Kel, though the two have never met and are unaware of each other. A popular and athletic teen on the surface, Kel is saddled with responsibility, and his tenuous self-sufficiency begins to crumble under the weight of his mother's descent into illness and alcoholism. At the beginning, all of the characters are alone and apart, burdened by secrets. But over the course of the novel they come to learn that we can build new families when our own don't suffice. VERDICT Moore's lovely novel (after The Words of Every Song) is about overcoming shame and loneliness and learning to connect. It is life-affirming but never sappy.—Lauren Gilbert, Sachem P.L., Holbrook, NY

Library Journal

In musician/novelist Moore's bifurcated second novel (The Words of Every Song, 2007), the two first-person narrations--from a housebound, grossly overweight former literature professor and a teenager in crisis over his future--never converge although they eventually intersect. Weighing in at over 500 pounds, Arthur Opp is approaching 60, alone and lonely in the Brooklyn house he hasn't left for years. Since his only friend has died, he avoids facing the world outside his front door; all his material needs are delivered. He spends his days eating. Then he receives a letter from a former student. When Charlene Turner took Arthur's class 20 years ago, she was intellectually out of her depth. Yet Arthur recognized a kindred spirit. After one semester she dropped out and he never saw her again; soon after, partly due to unfounded suspicions about their relationship, his own career disintegrated. Now Charlene makes a vague request that Arthur tutor her son. Anticipating her visit, Arthur hires a maid, Yolanda, a pregnant high-school dropout who brings unexpected life and energy into his home. But although the title refers to Arthur's quirky, larger-than-life charm, readers will find his story expendable compared to the struggles faced by single mom Charlene's son Kel. Kel's narrative, full of male adolescent swagger and uncertainty, is heart-wrenching. Charlene's desperate attempts to give him the chances she missed cause Kel to struggle with deeply divided loyalties as he commutes from his working-class Yonkers neighborhood to a prestigious Westchester high school where Charlene used to work as secretary. Handsome and athletic, Kel is beloved by his friends and teachers, who have bent rules to keep Kel enrolled ever since Charlene quit (or was fired) several years ago. Now a senior, Kel is tempted by a professional baseball scout, while Charlene drinks away her days to dull the pain of lupus and concocts her wild scheme, doing whatever it takes to get Kel to attend college. Only a hardhearted reader will remain immune to Kel's troubled charm.

Kirkus Reviews

Read More