From Dante to Mengescu, Hell Has Gotten Harder to Escape

Does the title of Dinaw Mengestu's first novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, seem familiar?

If it does, it's because the phrase is one of the concluding lines of Dante's Inferno-the simple, sublime description of what Dante sees when he emerges from the last circle of hell. Perhaps Mengestu is familiar to some, too, since he is a recent graduate of Columbia's School of the Arts.

In this compelling new novel, exiting hell proves more problematic than it was for Dante. The narrator, Sepha Stephanos, fled from a hellish situation in Africa to America. Though this premise sounds may sound like a cliche, a refreshing prose style and the artful construction of characters and situations prevents the novel from being just another immigrant's tale. A good deal of the novel involves Sepha's memories and observations, rather than his actions, but the thoughts of Sepha's sensitive, clever mind are absorbing just the same.

Sepha, who narrates in stark and subtle language, is the owner of a derelict grocery store in Washington, D.C. who fled Ethiopia years ago for reasons that remain a mystery until the midpoint of the book. He stocks expired products and spends most of the day in his unfrequented store reading books; he goes through one every two days. Lonely and introspective, he walks 883 steps daily between his store and home-with no family, no success, and no ambition for either. It is to Mengestu's credit that he combines Sepha's stagnation with a poignant, poetic insight into the world around him.

Mengestu is adept at juxtaposing Sepha's past and present hells. The novel seamlessly and appropriately alternates between memory and observation, America and Africa, past and present. These distinctions are by no means absolute- past is dexterously fused with present, memory informs observations, and Africa haunts Sepha's America.

Sepha is decades and an ocean removed from Africa, but he and his friends-a Kenyan engineer and a Congolese waiter-often play a game in which one blurts out the name of an African head of state and the others must identify the violent circumstances in which he was ousted. The continent's failings are recalled with dark humor, which succeeds in rousing this meditative novel at points. In Sepha's account of his last few months in Africa, the arbitrary persecutions, unstable security, and ruthlessness are conveyed quite starkly, casting an interesting light on the novel up to that point and the events afterward.

It is somewhat apparent that this is a first novel, since some of the movements in the story have dead ends. While the lack of spontaneity in the writing can possibly be excused by the narrator's routine activities, the novel errs when it tries to relate a memory or insight to a situational stimulus. Case in point: Sepha must travel to a building occupied by Ethiopian immigrants in order to muse on Ethiopian immigrants, though nothing that adds to the plot actually happens while he is there.

On the other hand, another set of memories, concerning the ambitions and potential of immigrants, is striking for its authenticity. Sepha came to America as a teenager, with a successful future ahead of him if he wanted it. But he did not immigrate for his future; rather, he immigrated as a result of his past. He represents the immigrants inhibited by their history, those for whom a clean start would be impossible.

There are other immigrant archetypes in the novel, too, but these are lifelike portraits because they exist in this typical way among immigrant communities-the Kenyan engineer consents to work on holidays when everyone in the office has left; the Congolese waiter works in an upscale restaurant frequented by senators and diplomats but doesn't want his friends to see him in his suit during work.

All this is accompanied by the deliberately ironic yet understated presence of the grand monuments of D.C. Mengestu's setting and secondary characters are a bit too perfect in what they embody and symbolize. The orchestration of these elements is obvious-but also obviously skillful. Such moments may seem sophomoric, but they also speak to the potential of Mengestu as a budding new novelist.