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Heft [Paperback]

Liz Moore
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
RRP: £9.99
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Book Description

3 May 2012

Former academic Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and hasn't left his rambling Brooklyn home in a decade. Twenty milesaway, 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 sporting career-if he can untangle himself from his family drama. The link between this unlikely pair is Kel's mother, Charlene, a former student of Arthur's. After nearly two decades of silence, it is Charlene's unexpected phone call to Arthur - a plea for help-that jostles them into action.

Through Arthur and Kel's own quirky and lovable voices, HEFT tells the winning story of two improbable heroes whose sudden connection transforms both their lives. It is a novel about love and family found in the most unexpected places.


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Product details

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Hutchinson (3 May 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0091944201
  • ISBN-13: 978-0091944209
  • Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 13.4 x 2.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 159,811 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

Liz Moore's skill as a tight storyteller is matched by her sensitivity to the things people do to stay safe . Moore, whose love for her characters is palpable, helps them ease off their heavy cocoons before they suffocate . astonishing second novel . Every kiss, every mouthful of food resonates with a gorgeous revelling in life's physicality; so much so that the big ideas behind this quietly impressive narrative show themselves as naturally and beautifully as Yolanda's suddenly swelling belly.. Full of surprises and love and healing, Heft is the most unsentimental sentimental journey you will read this year. (Melissa Katsoulis The Times )

Read it: you'll like it. (Observer )

The clarity of the prose. consciously avoids stylistic showiness or literary pretentions. the novel ends up providing a gentle but complex understanding of what it is, as Arthur neatly points out, to lose one's "connection to the world" and end up a self-styled "noble hermit". (The Sunday Times )

A gentle fiction as big-hearted as its star is heavy (Vogue 20120411)

Moore's lovely novel is about overcoming shame and loneliness and learning to connect. It is life-affirming. (Library Journal )

Book Description

You can find love in the most unexpected places

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Lonely echoes. 30 Oct 2012
By Sue Kichenside TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
Once in a while, a book comes along that gets into your very bones. Liz Moore inhabits two very different voices in her book Heft. One is Arthur Opp, a morbidly obese, 50-something former academic who both physically and mentally has been unable to leave the downstairs of his Brooklyn home for a decade. The other is Kel Keller, an 18-year old from Yonkers, a promising baseball player with a desperately depressed mother, Charlene, who is the link between the two men.

The theme here is loneliness. Arthur has chosen his lonely path but Kel has his thrust upon him. He has no other family but his mother, Charlene, and no-one to share the burden of her illness with him. Charlene reveres scholarship above all else and has wangled her non-academic son Kel into a top-notch school and a milieu that is alien to him.

The book alternates between these two clearly different and totally believable voices. They are as real as if they were in the room with you. Both story threads are terribly sad and genuinely touching - I would not say that this is an easy read. But there are uplifting moments and so good is Liz Moore's writing that you will want to know what happens to these characters you have come very much to care for.

Heft has echoes - lonely echoes - of two great books: A Confederacy of Dunces (Penguin Modern Classics) and I Sent a Letter to My Love (Abacus Books). I think it would be fair to say that Heft joins them in providing the empathetic reader with a truly memorable account of how hard it is sometimes to be a human being.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Two damaged guys and their complex lives 27 April 2012
By Mrs. T. SALMON TOP 1000 REVIEWER VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
I loved this book from the moment I picked it up. It is about two people Arthur Opp and Kel Keller. Arthur is a very over weight recluse who has a very uneventful life, his only enjoyment comes from eating and he is really ashamed of the way he eats. He once used to teach and one of his ex pupils Charlene Turner was in a way the love of his life. Charlene is such a sad character and also the mother of Kel. Kel is an eighteen year old poor kid in a rich kids school, he survives because he is good at sports. Charlene contacts Arthur to ask him to tutor Kel, but this doesn't happen, but does start a chain of events that changes both thier lives. I am not sure why it is called Heft as it is not a name that anyone mentions, unless its about weight of emotion that this book carries . The end was not what I expected. I just want to mother both of them and would love to read about their lives after the last pages, but this is now left to the imagination, which is what I think a good book should do. Great book, well writen and wonderful characters.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Families come in all shapes and sizes 23 Feb 2013
By Denise4891 TOP 100 REVIEWER VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
Heft is a delightful book, heartwarming (but not schmaltzy) with two very different but equally endearing lead characters.

Arthur Opp is a morbidly obese, housebound former professor who once had a very brief but meaningful liaison with a former student, Charlene Turner. He hasn't heard from Charlene for 20 years, during which time his life has shrunk (unlike his body) to a point where his only contact with the outside world is through online shopping and visits from delivery men. Charlene telephones him out of the blue to ask that he help her son Kel with his college applications. This unexpected contact gives the reclusive Arthur a new lease of life as he sets about sprucing up his home in anticipation of the visit of Charlene and her son , but unfortunately for Arthur things don't go according to plan.

The story is told from the viewpoints of Arthur and Kel and they both make very likeable and engaging narrators. Kel is a happy and well-adjusted teenager, a gifted sportsman who is popular and respected amongst his peers. The only dark cloud in life is the responsibility he bears in looking after his mother Charlene.

In their own very different ways, both Arthur and Kel are two lost souls who come to symbolise what it means to be lonely and isolated, but also how even the briefest human contact can lead to hope and opportunity. Liz Moore has created two very empathetic and memorable characters as well as an engaging and believable supporting cast. I was totally absorbed in their worlds and was sorry to leave them behind when I finished the book.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars An unexpected pleasure
Heft just didn't seem to be my cup of tea. The cover told me that it was about a grossly overweight man who lives the life of a hermit and a seventeen year old college boy who was... Read more
Published 8 days ago by Bantam Dave
5.0 out of 5 stars A fantastic idea and storyline
I loved this book - two individuals: one an overweight recluse and the other the son of a former pupil of the first. Read more
Published 8 days ago by S. A. Broadhurst
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful and sad
After reading the opening few chapters, I left this book for some time. It hadn't grabbed me. Now, I feel a little silly: what initially felt like a lack of engagement later... Read more
Published 10 days ago by Richard Hammond
5.0 out of 5 stars balanced, raw, indulgent
A one-sitting read that grabs you by the scruff go the neck and says stop feeling sorry for yourself. Characters rich in detail and absurdly lifelike,
Published 11 days ago by joroley
5.0 out of 5 stars Sometimes friends become that family you need...
Heft by Liz Moore for me was an interesting read but yet very different read about two lonely characters who will change each others lives in so many ways. Read more
Published 14 days ago by Ms P. Wilson
5.0 out of 5 stars QUIRKY AND COMPLEX NOVEL
For a work of fiction this is an amazing novel. We have two main characters who are poles
apart in every aspect. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Mrs. C. Swarfield
5.0 out of 5 stars good book
strange story but worth reading. it these days of isolation and easy food opportunities, it seemed to fit our current culture
Published 2 months ago by Chris
4.0 out of 5 stars Moving
This was an enjoyable and moving novel. It had an interesting storyline and it was a little bit different from normal. Read more
Published 4 months ago by The Emperor
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic book!
This is my favourite book of 2013 so far - and it will take some beating! I wish that I had written it.
Published 4 months ago by R. Stopps
4.0 out of 5 stars Outsiders
Heft interweaves two stories: Arthur Opp, a morbidly obese former academic and Kel Keller, a 17yo potential baseball hero. Read more
Published 5 months ago by MisterHobgoblin
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