Customer Reviews

The Rooms of Heaven: A Story of Love, Death, Grief, and the Afterlife

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Mary Allen has written an important book about drug addiction, its effect on the life of not just the addict, and how "co-dependency" makes it all that much "easier" for the addict and those are closest to the addict, continue on their destructive paths. Then Ms. Allen describes to us her own brief visit into the realm of mental illness and her obsessive search for what ever remains of her ill-starred love, Jim Beaman, as a spirit or "shade". To have revealed as much as Ms. Allen has about her own problems took a great deal of courage, I think. If the reader is looking for a lot of "New Age" nonsense about the afterlife and her experiences in attempting to contact the spirit of Jim Beaman, you won't find it here! If Ms. Allen is anything at all, it's thoughtful and level-headed. She is not prone to flights of New Age fancy . But she does show us just how ephemeral the human spirit can be. I can't recommend this book too highly. It may not "satisfy" the "sensationalist seeking" reader fixated on learning all the "nuts and bolts" of Ms. Allen's attempts at after-death communication with the shade of her deceased lover, and just how successful she was. But this book was never intended to be that kind of book. It was written in a "literary style", it raises importatant questions of human spirituality, and is as "down-to-earth" as Ms. Allens' adopted Iowa.

Mary Allen has written a very candid account of her love affair with an alcoholic cocaine addict that is, at times, so unguarded as to be embarassing. Why doesn't this intelligent, articulate woman take charge of her life and relationship? Love, and all of the inexplicable things it leads us to do, is the answer. I was engrossed by the first part of the book wherein Mary recounted the love affair and eventual suicide of Jim. The second half of the book, in which she recounts her search for answers rang true to me, as the surviver of a loved one's suicide, but was ultimately (and inevitably) unsatisfying. There are no answers out there.

Mary Allen is a master. I am Jim Beaman, to great extent. I am addicted to most anything I like, and I KNOW how the PULL of the demons feels. Mary captures that...she knows it, as she was addicted to the addictive personality. She loved him. It shows. As does her aching, crying grief. And every point of human emotion along the wide scale. Her love of Iowa...and the University, and writing...all come to life, in this tale of death, despair...and return, recovery. Jim Beaman loved you, Mary. I do too.

The first half of Mary Allen's "The Rooms of Heaven," with its perfect sense of pace and detail, is one of the best openings to any memoir I've ever read. You'd have to look to Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes" or Tobias Wolff's "This Boy's Life" to find anything comparable. But, as remarkable as the opening is, it is the second half, with its rise into the afterlife, that goes beyond anything I've ever read, and here Allen has no rivals. I was completely blown away by this stunning memoir.

I would also use the word haunting to describe this book. Haunting and gut-wrenching, and in a strange way, almost familiar in parts. As I read it, totally engrossed, I kept thinking "there, but for the grace of God....". The rather innocent beginning, in a college town in the midwest, reminded me of earlier days of my own, as well as the meeting of someone who is so appealing that it creates an instant bond. And then the mysterious stangeness of addiction, and the feeling that somehow you could make it all better, but can't. And then the second part, stranger than the first, but no less plausible, just that the author slid over the edge of 'rationality'. Mary Allen is a compelling writer, and a courageous one. I'm glad I read this book (twice), although it was an intense and occasionally an uncomfortable experience.

This book so moved me that I felt compelled to write to Mary Allen, though I've never written to an author before. I found my copy in a second-hand store. It drew me to it in much the same way that Mary's life had coincidences and connections that could not be predicted.

How can I say what affected me so about it? It wasn't that, 22 years ago, a close friend took his life, as Jim Beaman did. It wasn't quite because my ex had a bad relationship with cocaine. It was really that the honest telling of Mary's love and life with Jim was so true, in all its details.

I believe, as Mary does, in life after death. And I also believe in synchronicity, those strange seeming coincidences that catch us by surprise. Dreaming of a friend, and then she calls the next day, after years of silence. Learning a new word, and then you start seeing it everywhere.

One coincidence about this particular copy of the book took me totally by surprise. The book, of course, was used, so it had its former owner's name, in feminine script, on the first page. "N. [last name]," it read. When I flipped to the Acknowledgments section at some later point (it was dog-eared), I saw Mary's last thank-you sentence: "... and John [same last name], who read the manuscript and listened to me talk about it so often he practically knows it by heart."

So this book has come to mean more to me than just the story, which is moving and sparkling enough. Although N. gave it away, I never will!

When I read the cover on Mary Allen's book, I expected a description of heaven revealed as a result of the death of her boyfriend. This, however was not the case. It was an outpouring of emotion, from start to finish.. a story of true love, gutsy, and uninhibited. For the strength of this woman alone, this book is worth the time. You just have to give Mary credit for putting into words, the affairs of the heart, and head, no matter how horrible they may sound. And, if you have ever been around a addictive personality, this may open your eyes to the light of day.

Mary has succeeded in bringing her "Jim" to the attention of the world, so that it could not go on spinning, oblivious to his arrival or departure. He was here. They were in love. Now he's gone. It hurts! He existed!!! What a loving memorial to him, to their love, to the pain everyone suffers at the hands of addiction. A powerful and honest memoir of a love that really did occur in this world, in Iowa City. I wish Mary love in her future life as an outstanding author. The book is spellbinding. I couldn't put it down, out of sheer respect for the couple!

This suspenseful and elegantly written book seized my attention and wouldn't let go even after I finished reading it. As uncategorizable as it is powerful, "The Rooms of Heaven" recounts Mary Allen's attempt at transcendence in the aftermath of her lover, Jim Beamon's, death. For her, his drug addiction and suicide are not simply miseries endured but cause for meditation on the shock his personality, in all of its contradictions, has on her own. I have never seen grief depicted with such raw immediacy. But her, and our, passage through such grief leads to the soaring ending: literary art has become Allen's most faithful medium in bringing Jim Beamon vividly to life.

This book is richly detailed and yet concisely pared down, a page-turner of the most unusual variety. Allen's culling of facts and incident has great passion but importantly reflects her years of contemplation afterward. It is profoundly felt and refuses sensationalism, wherein I think lies the feeling of its being so "true". The prose is wonderful, a tall drink of cool water on a hot day. I could not put it down, or stop thinking about it afterwards.