Heft by Liz Moore

Last month, I saw this book being recommended on Twitter by a number of authors I follow. I am finding my library request list full of books I read about in someone's tweet. Some are spiritual, some are novels but they have all be read by someone I follow on Twitter. Sometimes I enjoy the book, sometimes I cannot finish it. But I like that it stretches my reading into areas I may not find myself on my own.

That is true of this book. I doubt I would have picked up Heft by Liz Moore on my own. The cover is not one that would have drawn my eye necessarily and the description on the inside flap might have even caused me to move on to another book.

"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--if he can untangle himself form is difficult family life."

But I didn't have that information when I ordered the book and once it had arrived I felt a need to at least give it a try. While it didn't keep me up reading late into the night, I am still glad I read it. It was a slower book, one you could put down but then had to pick up again. I really liked the people I met in this book. I love a book that can put you into a character so completely that you begin to truly understand them and the choices they make, even if they are so far from the choices you would make yourself. The characters in this book became so real to me that I was actually annoyed at the author for ending the story before I felt ready to say goodbye to them.

My other frustration with this book is that it actually deals with an issue I am writing about in my own book though the character deals with it in a completely different way. It was interesting to see how her characters responded to what happened. I couldn't see it that way until I read Heft. Which is the reason I love to read. Books allow me to get outside myself and my world view, to see things in a new way.