As Bright As Heaven

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, death, child death, and substance use.

As a whole, As Bright as Heaven interrogates the way that humans navigate the most painful parts of existence, and one tactic that the novel proposes is the simple act of being kind to one another. Care for fellow humans evolves not just as a moral good but as an imperative for survival—the element that gives life meaning and defines humanity.

Pauline, in an ironic contrast, comes to an understanding of the importance of care through her work in the embalming room at the funeral home. Though a wife and mother who is accustomed to providing emotional support for her husband and nurturing her children, Pauline’s work preparing bodies for viewing and then burial causes her to confront the slender boundaries between life and death. She thinks of the soul as the flame that, in death, leaves behind the body, the candle; all that is left to observe the passage of a human life is this last bit of care for the candle before the body is committed to the earth. Pauline sees this final rite as another provision of nurture that reaches across cultures and across history and has taken on a sacred aspect.