The narrator of Heaven is a teenage boy living in a kind of hell, bullied relentlessly and violently by his classmates because of his lazy eye. His only friend, Kojima, suffers the same fate day after day, week after week, because of her appearance. Their friendship, tentative and uncertain, is the single haven in an endless storm of humiliation and brutality, the only solace in a world of sadness and loneliness.

Does suffering have meaning? For Momose, one of the bullies, no. People hurt others because they can. It’s as simple as that. Countering this nihilism, Kojima asserts that her suffering has significance. “There’s meaning in overcoming pain and suffering.” I don’t want to spoil the ending, but the final word is given to the narrator whose vision of beauty and hope closes the novel.

It has been more than a year since I read Mieko Kawakami’s bestseller, Breasts and Eggs, a novel I remember particularly for its distinctive, unusual voice. I recommended the book to several friends and it was one of those friends who kindly gave me Kawakami’s latest work, Heaven, after spotting it in a London bookshop. I think it’s safe to say it won’t be the voice I remember when I think about Heaven. It will be the harrowing subject matter and Kawakami’s unflinching description of bullying and its consequences.