Leky, Mariana "What You Can See From Here" (German: Was man von hier aus sehen kann) - 2017
In 2017, this novel was awarded The Favourite Book of the Independents and that is the only reason I was made aware of it. I liked the first one I read from that list and every other one that I read subsequently. Because the one that received the prize last year still isn't available in paperback, I went to one of the older ones, this one.
And I am glad I did. This was such a lovely book, a story of a small village where everyone sticks together, no matter how hard it is sometimes, where everyone looks after everybody else, whether they like them or not. A great description of a functioning small community. The novel has been described as "warm". Yes, it is that but it is so much more. It's a love story as well as a philosophical quest, a coming of age story as well one about old age.
This book is described as "magic realism" and I have tagged it accordingly, though it really is more a touch of superstition in my eyes.
It is hard to describe the book without giving too much away, only this, there is a lot to be said about loss and how to deal with it and this book does it beautifully.
Mariana Leky is certainly an author to be watching out for, I will read more of her novels, so far she has written nine. Where do I begin?
From the back cover:
"In this international bestseller by the award-winning novelist Mariana Leky, What You Can See from Here, a heartwarming story unfolds about a small town, a grandmother whose dreams foretell a coming death, and the young woman forever changed by these losses and her loving, endearingly oddball community
On a beautiful spring day, a small village wakes up to an omen: Selma has dreamed of an okapi. Someone is about to die.
Luisa, Selma’s ten-year-old granddaughter, looks on as the predictable characters of her small world begin acting strangely. Though they claim not to be superstitious, each of her neighbors newly grapples with buried secrets and deferred decisions that have become urgent in the face of death.
Luisa’s mother struggles to decide whether to end her marriage. An old family friend, known only as the optician, tries to find the courage to tell Selma he loves her. Only sad Marlies remains unchanged, still moping around her house and cooking terrible food. But when the prophesied death finally comes, the circumstances fall outside anyone’s expectations. The loss forever changes Luisa and shapes her for years to come, as she encounters life’s great questions alongside her devoted friends, young and old.
A story about the absurdity of life and death, a bittersweet portrait of small towns and the wider world that beckons beyond, this charmer of a novel is also a thoughtful meditation on the way loss and love shape not just a person but a community. Mariana Leky’s What You Can See from Here is a moving tale of grief, first love, reluctant love, late love, and finding one’s place in the world, even if that place is right where you started."
