4.5★s
What You Can See From Here is a novel by German author, Mariana Leky. It is translated from German by Tess Lewis. Selma has once again dreamt of an okapi and that means someone is going to die. Selma’s ten-year-old granddaughter Luisa has permission to tell only her best friend, Martin, but word gets around anyway. While the villagers claim they don’t believe it, they are all unsettled, because that’s what has happened previously.

The idea that someone is going to die stimulates a rash of revelations; even those villagers sceptical of the impending death are motivated to confess secrets: undeclared love; the diaries of an unfaithful husband read; a burning desire to leave the village and see the world; indecision about ending a marriage; the poles of a hunting hide sawn through.

As twenty-four hours pass without a death, the village breathes a communal sigh of relief, so when death comes a few hours later, it’s a shock. But to whom it comes is truly devastating.

Twelve years on, there are changes in the village: some have acted on those revelations; others have not. Luisa, working for a grumpy book shop owner, encounters a beautiful Buddhist monk in the woods. But he’s only in the Westerwald temporarily: soon he’ll return to his monastery in Japan

Leky’s tale has a very European feel: both the style and the content of this novel are very reminiscent of Fredrik Backman’s work. She fills the novel with unusual characters, some a little quirky, some downright eccentric: an aspiring weightlifter, a cranky young recluse, a florist specialising in wreaths, and an expert in folk remedies, to name a few.

While many of the characters are named, some are most often denoted by occupation or status: the optician, the shopkeeper, the Mayor’s wife. The reader is privy to the innermost thoughts and concerns of the main players, some of which are a rich source of humour.

Leky often gives her characters wise words and insightful observations. At one point Luisa tells the reader: “Selma wanted to talk about death with us, but we wouldn’t let her, as if Death were a distant relative we were ignoring because he always behaved badly.”

If the reader is not familiar with the okapi, they should definitely ensure they see an image of this strange and remarkable animal. The latter chapters do drag a little, but this is ultimately a heart-warming, if slightly weird, read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

What you can see from here is set in a small village in Germany. It's a quiet story, simply told, about a young girl growing up, basically ignored by her parents, but much loved and cared for by her grandmother and her grandmother's friends. Her grandmother is there for her when tragedy strikes, and is there for her every day afterward as she reclaims her life and eventually finds love. No, it's not a love story. Not exactly. Hard to describe, but it left me feeling good, able to close the book with a smile on my face. A rare thing

A slow and meditative novel following a cast of characters in a small German town. I liked the combination of superstition and complicated family dynamics, but had a hard time being interested in the characters outside of Selma. The writing is very dialogue based and not very lyrical, so it wasn't exactly what I was expecting. There were no "wow" moments, it was overall just a nice way to pass time.

This book was very sad and also quite confusing to me. I had a hard time becoming involved with the characters - and staying interested. Could be my life stage.
Just didn't grab my attention.

New favorite book of all time. I had no idea what to expect from this story and it completely sucked me in and broke my heart in the best way. The unique premise was an immediately compelling opening. After that, I grew to love each member of the village. Every single character was fleshed out, complex, and sympathetic in some way. I quite literally laughed and cried the whole way through the story. If you love the found family trope, this is perfect. I will revisit this story often.

One morning, Luisa's grandma, Selma, wakes up from a dream about an okapi. Everyone in their small town knows what this means – someone is about to die. People go about their day, taking care not to do activities that they believe might invite death and deciding whether to share big truths in case it is their last day. Just when they think the danger has passed, an unexpected death befalls the community.

This book is definitely character driven rather than plot driven. It took a little while for me to get into the book, but once I did, I was invested in the characters' lives. I think I actually liked a lot of the side characters better than Luisa. The book (translated from German) definitely had a mainland European feel to it. I don't know how to explain it, but the French and German books I have read have a different atmosphere to them than American and even British books do. Overall, I enjoyed it, and I might even have cried a little toward the end.

Many thanks to NetGalley for providing me an audio ARC of this book.

Luisa is the narrator of this story starting at age 10. Her best friend, Martin, is killed in a freak accident the day after her grandmother, Selma, dreamt of an okapi. The book was filled with quirky characters - Elsbeth who was extremely superstitious, the optician who has secretly loved Selma all his life, Luisa's father who travels all the time, her mother who is having an affair with the ice cream man, Marlies who is chronically depressed and Palm. Frederick is a Buddhist monk living in Japan who Luisa runs into in the woods. I didn't feel like there was a real plot, there was no mystery, no romance as you would expect just a story of life in a small town.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me a copy of this book.

This book is not my usual go to genre but it was a heartwarming, bittersweet story none the less.
originally translated from German I found it to be a very slow read but the characters kept my interest. Just an all round nice and interesting book.
Thank you to Netgalley, Farrar, Straus and Giroux and the Author Mariana Leky for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

It took me a bit to get into this story. There are quite a few characters to meet right out of the gate but the author does a good job of introducing them through the eyes of 10 year old Louisy, the narrator. After the first few chapters, the rhythm of the writing and the pace of the village takes over and the story just sucked me in. There is a a timeless feel to this story, for quite a while I thought the book took place in the early/mid 1900s not the 90s/00s.

Somehow the books I requested through NetGalley earlier in the year seem to have a common central theme of grief. It's been a lot to process personally while reading these books but I got some solace and comfort from this book, especially.

*I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher and I am required to disclose that in my review in compliance with federal law.*

What You Can See From Here
By Mariana Leky

A beautifully told story of a modern classic tale set in a small village in Germany. This gem of a read is a treasure I have discovered and feel so much joy to have read such a delightful and charming novel. This story is about a community, its characters told in a unique and special voice that is utterly entertaining and heartwarming.

Originally written in German, the English translation brought the book to life for me in a very impressive way. A coming of age story about Luisa and her world that includes her grandmother, a prominent character in the story. This is a story about families, the community, and how we move forward after experiencing loss and grief.

This is a hopeful story about complex themes in a simply told storyline.

First published in Germany in 2017; published in translation by‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux on June 22, 2021

What You Can See from Here takes place in the German village of Westerwald. The story is narrated by Luisa, the granddaughter of Selma and Heinrich. She tells the story in three parts. The first focuses on the unsettled reaction of various villagers to the news that Selma dreamt of an okapi, a dream that always foretells a death. As they near the end of the time during which death is expected to claim one of them, the villagers tell each other truths that cannot later be unspoken.

The second part focuses on Luisa’s relationship with a Buddhist monk from Germany named Frederik who lives in a monastery in Japan. Frederik chats briefly with Luisa on a visit to Westerwald — she tells him every significant detail of her life in a single paragraph — and returns to spend time with her on a longer visit. Frederik gets to know all the villagers while doing his best (or not) to maintain a certain distance from Luisa. Whether the fate that brought them together will allow them to remain together is the novel’s plot driver.

The third part circles back to death, but this time death is presented not as something to fear, but as something to accept if everything goes smoothly, or even if it doesn’t. The love story of Luisa and Frederik is at least partially resolved, although perhaps not in a way that the reader will expect.

Luisa’s complicated family life adds to the novel’s humor. She never knew Heinrich, who built the crooked house in which she lives with her mother. Louisa’s father Peter is always traveling, perhaps in search of his father (a character points out that Heinrich’s death conveniently allows Peter’s search to occur anywhere in the world). Luisa’s mother is constantly fretting about whether she should leave Peter, suggesting an alternate explanation for Peter’s travels (“You can’t stay with someone who is always asking herself if she should leave you.”). She compromises by keeping company with the owner of the ice cream parlor, which isn't a bad choice.

We meet Luisa in her childhood when her best friend Martin is still alive. By the novel’s end, Luisa is in her thirties and the village is tolerating Martin’s father Palm, who has harnessed his demons but not his pain. Whether pain is meant to be endured or resolved is one of the novel’s themes, as reflected in the lives and experiences of several characters. Dr. Maschke believes that Peter suffers from encapsulated pain that is embodied in Alaska, a seemingly immortal dog that is devoted to Peter despite Peter’s rare appearances in the village. Palm learns to deal with his pain by boring villagers with quotations from the Bible. A villager named Marlies cannot bear company, including her own, but the villagers watch out for her despite her rejection of their companionship.

Death is obviously an additional theme, as is love. Luisa’s mother suggests that Luisa has linked them in her mind — that her conception of love is a form of death. She tells Luisa that love and death are “slightly different,” in that “a few people have returned from the kingdom of love.” A character known only as the optician has a secret love for Selma that he cannot reveal because inner voices tell him not to take the chance. He tries to tell Selma of his love in hundreds of letters but never makes it past the first sentence or two, sentences that set up a proclamation he fails to deliver.

Apart from Selma’s dreams of the okapi, little hints of magic appear at significant moments — a quiet stream suddenly roars, a moon shines more brightly than usual. Things fall when Luisa tells a lie. Heinrich’s sister Elsbeth is a source of home remedies (resting your forehead on the forehead of a horse cures headaches) but she has no protection against death.

The story is seasoned with the magic of laughter. I particularly enjoyed the fact that anyone calling Frederik’s monastery needs to engage with six monks, none of whom speak English, before Frederik finally comes to the phone.

The novel approaches questions of meaning and philosophy with tongue in cheek. The optician is obsessed with the question, “Is it true that something can disappear if we try to see it, but can’t disappear if we don’t try to see it?” The question seems very Zen, but Frederik doesn’t know what to make of it. The optician eventually devises an answer that he regards as illuminating. Frederik isn’t so sure, but he’s open to people finding their own path to enlightenment.

What you should do with yourself is the novel’s (and perhaps Buddhism’s) central question. Selma thought that “staying put was always exactly right.” Peter promised to stay put before he decided to travel the world instead. Luisa has always assumed that she would stay put until Frederik tells her that she was made to travel the seven seas — a description of her purpose that Luisa immediately rejects. By the novel’s end, after Frederik and Luisa have been corresponding for ten years, Luisa needs to decide how she wants to live her life.

Readers who love offbeat stories with quirky characters might want to put What You Can See from Here on top of their reading lists. It’s funny, charming, and insightful without making an obvious effort to be any of those things.

RECOMMENDED

This was a slow mover for me. The characters were cute and quirky, but never developed enough that I was invested with them and their stories. When Selma dreams of an okapi, the whole village knows this means death for someone, It is a story of superstition, grief, confusion, and love. There was a lot going on in the story and really nothing at all. I finished it, but it wasn’t my favorite!

Book Details
CON: At first when I was reading, I felt somewhat confused. The segues between scenes were not smoothly done. It jumped from the present to the past without warning. Also, the change of subject from one page to another I felt needs improvement. I wished there had been more substance and dialogue in the epilogue. I really wanted to know what Luisa and Frederick's future held.

PRO: I liked the different threads of the lives of the small village people: Luisa, Selma, Peter, Elsbeth, Marlies, Frederik and the optician. They were so different from each other and shared everything that occurred in their lives whether good or bad. They were all a close-knit family of their own making. When I got to the last page when Luisa was waving to Frederik it reminded me of the beginning when Selma's husband was waving at her, I felt a chill of Deja vu. I loved the characters each had their own demons and personality quirks and yet were impossible not to love. They were honest and realistic. I felt part of their put together family. I felt I knew them as they knew each other. The book I felt was like a diary recalling all the highs and lows, all the smiles and frowns, all the pain and joy and most importantly the love they all felt for one another young and old, male and female.

CONCLUSION: It is worth reading if one can overlook the awkward segues and transitions of past and present also of the change of characters. I feel this is a book that I need to read again to really understand all the author wanted to convey.

I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review.
Reasons I enjoyed this book:
Entertaining
Original
Page-turner
Realistic
Tragic
Unpredictable
Wonderful characters

A very moving story. Love, loss and…. Dreams. This author has a genuine writing style.
Thank you NetGalley.

WHAT YOU CAN SEE FROM HERE by Mariana Leky starts with a dream. A fateful dream starring the rare, but decidedly real okapi, sets off a series of events that transform the lives of everyone in a small German village, most immediately Luisa, a young girl whose story unfolds throughout this novel. Astoundingly crafted with sentences so well-made that they made my heart sing, the story features memorable, relatable, beautifully human characters so vividly drawn that I feel like I know them. Leky writes fiction like poetry, a story that feels dreamlike and yet down-to-earth in its lyrical, unique, powerful story. Enter the story and enter another world that feels as real and moving as anything you have ever known. Over the course of generations, lives intertwine and come apart with subtle and irresistible beauty. I received an advance reader copy of this book in exchange for my unbiased review.

Reminded me of some Alice Hoffman mixed with a dash of that bookstore book from a few years back with the male owner everyone loved? A little mystical realism? Anyway I liked this village and Leky's storytelling. I don't always fare well with translated books but this one hit the spot.

Twice before, Selma has seen an Okapi in her dreams and someone has died within twenty-four hours. This time it took twenty-nine. I really wanted to love this story and in the beginning I did. As time went on the things I loved to begin with began to be on the tedious side. With an eclectic cast of characters, a small village and a folklore like storyline, it should have really captured me. Unfortunately, it felt disjointed somehow. Perhaps it lost something along the way when it was translated from its German origins. I did enjoy the quirky, sometimes weird humor and found myself smiling in rather odd places.

I really enjoyed this book. This is the story of Luisa and her family in a village in Germany. There is a whimsical quality to it. It tells of joy, heartbreak, and all the emotions that come with growing up.

I loved this book! Every character was so quirky and original, and so well drawn. The story itself is lovely and while it doesn't shy away from dealing with grief, it is so hopeful.

I tend to read the same types of books over and over, and regardless of how unputdownable they are as I read them, two weeks later, I'd have a hard time distinguishing among their characters and finer plot points. This book was definitely an exception.

It opens when Luisa is ten years old and her grandmother, Selma, has a dream that all the villagers believe foretells a death. When 24 hours pass with nobody dying, they think it was a fluke--until there is a death, one so heartbreaking that it informs the next two decades of the village's trajectory. Particularly Luisa's life.

The unusual residents of the village where Luisa grows up and remains tied to through her grandmother will stay with the reader long after the novel is finished. The whole vibe of this book is so different from most American novels and reveals a lot about our cultural differences. Other reviewers and the blurb describe the book as heartwarming. I'm not sure that's the word I'd use to describe it because it sounds too twee. It is deeply affecting and memorable. Nothing much happens, but what does happen is significant. #WhatYouCanSeeFromHere #NetGalley