reviews
We Disappear
"[S]uspenseful....Clearly, this is a writer well acquainted with darkness.... We Disappear ventures down a twitchy, discomfiting path, with small disturbances blowing up into larger ones, like a film camera zooming in for a high-definition close-up.... We Disappear is more honest, and thus more troubling, for it reflects the stark knowledge that truth is only an amalgam of experience, a collection of individual shards that don't coalesce into a pleasing whole. As Heim suggests, the search for truth invites the Hansels and Gretels of the world to follow the wrong adult home, the Alices to peer down the rabbit hole—and fantasy to cover up the nasty grime of reality." — Sarah Weinman, for The Los Angeles Times
Mysterious Skin
reviews of the stage adaptation, which premiered in 2003
editorial reviews of the novel
(Unfortunately, not many of these exist as site links, as it has been a while since it was published).
- Lambda Book Report (by Jim Gladstone, author of The Big Book of Misunderstanding)
praise for Mysterious Skin
"After reading Heim's debut, one question remains: How will he top this? As searing and unforgettable as an electric shock." — Kirkus Reviews
"Wrenching...powerfully sensuous." — Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, for The New York Times
"Heim is just as interested in the ways of forgetting as in the getting of wisdom. (He) blurs the boundaries between victor and victim, desire and disgust to explore each of them more fully. He has produced a serious and moving work: its delirium is never allowed to mask a clear-sighted acknowledgement that passing lust can leave permanent pain." — Time Out (London)
"Eerie, precise, emotionally complex, quietly charismatic, and full of grace, Mysterious Skin is one of the most accomplished and mysteriously pleasurable first novels I've read in years." — Dennis Cooper
"He creates scenes of genuine beauty, and handles his complicated characters and delicate subject matter with calm assurance." — Publishers Weekly
"The ending left me with tears in my eyes-which is about the highest praise I can make of a novel." — Philadelphia Inquirer
"Heim is breathtakingly unafraid to take chances, and the fact that he doesn't self-destruct in the process is one of the reasons he can rightly be called a promising author." — San Francisco Chronicle
"With uncommon poetry and clarity, Scott Heim paints a devastating portrait of a new Lost Generation. Mysterious Skin will haunt and enrage you. I am awestruck by Heim's courage. Read this book." — Connie May Fowler
A book of wonders, a complex, wrenching story told so simply, yet with such beauty, that I'm tempted to say it's the greatest first novel by a gay writer under 30 since Other Voices, Other Rooms." — LGNY, New York
"BOOK OF THE YEAR. Technically daring but still intensely readable, Heim tackles current American obsessions with UFOs and pre-teen sex with spooky and unnerving beauty." — Roger Clarke, Attitude (London)
In Awe
editorial reviews
As with Mysterious Skin, few online editorial reviews are available due to the time that's passed since its publication.
praise for In Awe
"Unforgettable...Quite simply, In Awe is awesome: inordinately powerful and alarming, terrifying and breathtaking. A transcendent, bittersweet novel of obsession and pain, love and loathing, memory and desire. Heim is testing the limits of his dynamic, raw vision." — Kansas City Star
"An intense psychological thriller about the pain of love and loss." — Publishers Weekly
"The ripple of danger beneath the surface of Scott Heim's In Awe should serve as a warning to anyone expecting a casual ride: this is a book that means to take you places. A patina of malevolence overhangs Heim's Kansas, and even the quietest moments can have the most terrifying consequences for his trio of misfits, Boris, Sarah, and Harriet. The story draws us forward toward its heart like the best of spiderwebs." — Jim Grimsley
"Nimble, alarming, complex." — New York Post
"Heim teases out the pleasures of cruelty in language that scalpels one minute, unfurls lushly the next." — Village Voice
"Grand, uncanny, horrific, and sweet...Those who give themselves to it will be haunted." — Lambda Book Report
"The most beautifully lyrical and menacing book in recent memory. Imagine a Gen-X Faulkner on acid writing a horror novel...The characters, mood, themes and, most stunningly, the language are all brilliant accomplishments." — Windy City Times (Chicago)