Boy of Heaven, by Morris Hoffman, tells the story of an orphan boy in 17th-century Milan who discovers a fading mural, Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, hidden in what has become the stables of a Dominican priory. As the boy labors among horses, he has named after constellations; he alone sees the painting’s slow return to clarity. What unfolds is a lyrical meditation on suffering, faith, grief, and vision. Hoffman’s novel blends historical fiction with a mystical edge, threading deep emotion through a richly imagined world.

Reading this book pulled something quiet but insistent from me. Hoffman’s writing is unusual, almost liturgical in rhythm. It doesn’t always make for an easy read, but it makes for a rewarding one. There were passages I reread just to feel them again. The boy’s interior world is raw and lonely, but never melodramatic. There’s very little action in the conventional sense. Instead, the story unfolds through daily labor, small kindnesses, and sacred echoes. And yet, I found myself emotionally swept up in the boy’s grief for a horse, his awe at a fresco, his quiet yearning to be seen.

I feel the book drifts at times. There were sections where the pace slowed, where there were long descriptions of the priory or repeated imagery. Everything is so reverent. Still, what the book lacks in momentum, it makes up for in heart. The blend of the sacred and the mundane, the way the horses become mythic, the mystery of the fresco, that’s where it shines. It doesn’t explain itself, and that made it feel more honest and more relatable.

Boy of Heaven isn’t just about art or faith or even memory. It’s about seeing what others miss and holding on to what shouldn’t be forgotten. It’s a quiet book, but it left a loud feeling. I’d recommend it to anyone who loves poetic writing, historical fiction with a spiritual bend, or stories where nothing much happens on the outside but everything changes on the inside. This is not a book to speed through. It’s one to sit with, one to cherish in silence.

Pages: 90 | ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0F7C4BSRP