Heft (Moore)

Book Reviews
[E]engaging, quirky…Arthur's voice is engaging. His honesty is funny, even if the revelations of his haplessness are painful…Without archness or overly artistic sentences, Heft achieves real poignancy. [Moore]'s explanation of Arthur's psychology is perhaps too neat, but the warmth, the humanity and the hope in this novel make it compelling and pleasurable.
Carol Burns - Washington Post


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


Few novelists of recent memory have put our bleak isolation into words as clearly as Liz Moore does.... By the end we are in love with the characters and just want to see them happy.
San Francisco Chronicle


his 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


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