The Book of Heaven

Acclaimed poet and memoirist Storace (Dinner with Persephone) steps onto the terrain of myth, creating a feminist cosmology of sorts. in this novel of four women. We begin with Eve, who tells a tale of evading rape and discovering a zodiac of constellations that we usually cannot see from Earth. The constellations offer archaic feminine images, such as a giant cooking pot, and hold the tales of archetypal women (some biblical, some invented by Storace). Storace uncovers the women’s stories—and, throughout, implies that telling and hearing one another’s stories is a way to discover the sacred. (“We are God’s questions to each other, and through the lattice of our questions, we sometimes catch a glimpse of the divine.”) Along the way, the author delivers koan-like proverbs: “All marriages are arranged, except those in which the wife invents her husband, and the husband invents his wife.” Nominally a novel, the book is more poetic, elusive, and thought provoking than it is a page-turning narrative. What if God is a woman, or at least a god with a woman’s point of view? seems to be the overiding concept. The topic recalls Anita Diamant or Sue Monk Kidd, but the prose is almost self-consciously mystical. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit Associates. (Feb.)