"Does the Sky Open?" by Seán Hewitt | Do you see the star-glittering fabric?

It's a backwater in northern England where 16-year-old James grows up, a rugged and remote area surrounded by breathtaking nature: meadows stretching to the horizon, dense forests, mysterious caves, and tall, gnarled hedges. This lush landscape is the true protagonist in the novel "The Sky Opens" by the 35-year-old British author Seán Hewitt. It's not merely scenery and backdrop; it's a reflection and projection screen for the wild, turbulent emotions through which this boy, on the cusp of adulthood, rushes.

The rich evening light of spring, bathing the world in amber promise. Dark, secluded paths by a road underpass, symbolizing despair over one's own actions and desires. And then there's the disorientation through which James stumbles, having fallen in love with Luke, a slightly older, capricious, and free-spirited boy who, after a painful separation from his father, lives on his aunt and uncle's farm and, for all his daredevilry, is marked by a deep inner conflict. The two grow closer, becoming friends and companions, but the love James longs for remains elusive. It is unrequited and therefore unfulfilled.

Hewitt, who has already received numerous awards for his poetry collections, clearly follows in the footsteps of the nature-loving explorers of the soul of classical Romanticism in his debut novel, but he doesn't become an old-fashioned copycat poet from some dusty, moth-eaten archive. He succeeds—even if his richly textured, meaning-searching imagery often borders on poetic kitsch—in conjuring up a completely unique, modern sound that, in its casual melancholy and plaintive longing, is reminiscent of songs by bands like Communards, The Stone Roses, or Suede.

It's a sound that takes some time to sink in. But then it truly elevates this queer coming-of-age story to the level of a captivating page-turner soundtrack, one that relies less on a spectacular plot labyrinth and excessive violence, as in the works of an author like Douglas Stuart, and more on a poetic exploration of what Schopenhauer described as the world as will and representation. Hewitt achieves this with such gifted, sensual, and virtuosic language and clear literary vision that, despite the relatively plotless narrative, the reader is left with the feeling of trekking through a vast adventure landscape, captivated by the wonders and abysses of love and growing up.

James grows up in a poor, supposedly socially disadvantaged family, supplementing his pocket money by delivering milk; his younger brother suffers from an unclear illness that repeatedly leads to life-threatening attacks. It is a fragile environment in which the teenager lives with this newly awakened, burning desire that makes him an outsider in an arch-conservative community.

This omnipresent fragility and insecurity in his real life is undoubtedly one reason why James escapes into dream worlds and imaginings in an almost obsessive way, risking losing himself in them. "There were days," he writes in the book, "when I feared my longing for more love, more touch, might destroy the life ahead of me. I couldn't be in a place of pure need and exist at the same time. Life flowed past me like water, flowing around me."

The story's framework—told in four major chapters that follow the seasons—arises precisely from this failure in the search for eternal desire. The adult James returns to his home village after his love affair ends. In the place of his youthful memories, he begins to explore the root cause of his consuming longing and the impossibility of mature love. He dreams himself back to the time when this intense love and the shame surrounding his sexuality overwhelmed him.

While James appears lucid in his self-reflective trains of thought, this very fact simultaneously casts doubt on the narrator, because everything originates in James's mind and heart. There is no omniscient narrator who knows everything and provides certainty about what is being narrated. The resulting uncertainty also applies to Luke. Is he a real character or simply a product and projection screen for James's burning desires and indulgences? Even the vivid descriptions of nature, which reflect and amplify the ebb and flow of the experienced emotional landscape, spring from James's imagination. They intertwine the otherwise quite mundane story with the threads of life that reach into the eternity of the grand creation narrative. It is the star-glittering fabric of life's promise and fragility that Hewitt so skillfully, sublimely, and richly weaves together. In our time of wars, crises and mounting gloom, this subtle, artful novel acts as a damn good brightener.

Seán Hewitt: The Sky Opens. Translated from the English by Stephan Kleiner. Suhrkamp, ​​283 pp., hardcover, €25.