The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store or: when the first chapter is the end of the story.

After you finish James McBride’s latest, I urge you to return to the very beginning, which acts like a postscript to the novel’s tale, albeit structured as the prologue, perhaps a nod to the difficulty of untangling American history into any sort of easily-comprehensible straight line; our conception of America’s past — and, thereby, its present, and what the future may hold — is as multitudinous (and as potentially backwards) as the number of diverse Americans with individuated perspectives who lived it.

Speaking of individual perspectives, revisiting the start of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store raises the question: who’s narrating this early portion?!

Audiobookers won’t realize that the first and last chapters are italicized, denoting some sort of shift from the rest. Initially, this italicized voice sounds omniscient, liable to be interpreted as merely the author’s view. But a personality shines through near the end of the chapter, a deviation from the dryer tone to come.

Which raises the possibility that one of the book’s characters wrote this introduction. Given their use of the word “Yid” and the phrase “us colored folks,” it’s clear we’re listening to a member of the text’s Black community.

So which Black character has linguistic personality to spare, AND is the keeper of the town’s happenings and what’s happened, the very subjects of this hello?

Paper, of course. And her farewell “Mazel tov, honey” sealed the deal for me.

Now, this doesn’t answer who narrates the italicized final chapter, because Paper’s mortality precludes her from being privy to the information imparted therein.

Honestly, I haven’t figured it out, yet.

Any theories?