Heaven: A Novel

The unnamed narrator and protagonist of Heaven is a teen boy in middle school who is regularly bullied by the popular students in his class. The narrator suspects that the reason the bullies pick on him is because he has a lazy eye. This is evidenced by their common nickname for him: “Eyes.” The narrator reveals that his lazy eye is something he has in common with his birth mother whom he lost when he was very young; When he discusses his birth mother with his stepmother, she says that she wasn’t sure the narrator would even remember how his birth mother looked. The narrator underwent corrective surgery for his lazy eye when he was five years old, but the eye reverted after some time. Because of this, the narrator laments that he may be bullied for the rest of his life. He thinks that even when he enters adulthood, he will face exclusion because of his eye.  

The narrator is constantly harassed by the class bullies. The narrator’s character arc is thus defined by his evolving attitude toward suffering and how he associates his particular suffering with his lazy eye. The inciting event of the novel is when the narrator starts receiving notes from an anonymous classmate, who is interested in becoming the narrator’s friend.