This read was very unique. A story about a girl growing up with a grandmother who predicts someone’s death when she dreams of an okapi. I have to admit I was somewhat confused at times, struggling with the story line, perhaps because the plot develops so very slowly. Several times I was ready to give up on it but decided the pacing may speed up piquing my interest but I never truly was able to identify with any of the characters and was lost with the spiritual nature of Buddhism. Many thanks to Mariana Leky, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for providing me with this unique read.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Farrah, Straus and Giroux for gifting me a digital copy of this book by Mariana Leky. 3.5 stars rounded up.

This story follows the inhabitants of a small village in Western Germany as they cope with love and loss. Told from the perspective of Luisa, a 10-year-old as the story begins. The book follows Luisa through pivotal times in her life as she deals with family, community members and a new love.

This was a bit of a difficult read for me, which may be due to translation. It gives bits and pieces of different timelines of the story that you need to keep up with. Luisa’s family and community members are interesting and quirky - each holding secrets and beliefs that affect each other. But a wonderful character study as each deals with personal and community loss and change.

What You Can See From Here covered the subjects of love and loss with excellence. I am usually more of a dark, thriller reader but I wanted a change of PCs. Leky did a wonderful job! My heart is full.

What You Can See from Here by Mariana Leky begins with a death forecast but it is a story if life and community. The death when it comes was a surprise for me even though it had been predicted. The community, the superstitions, the rituals and the backstories are part of what makes this story so intriguing.

I haven’t read much German literature but the translation from German to English is easy to read and understandable. The uniqueness of the story is intriguing, and interesting.

An ARC of the book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley which I voluntarily chose to read and reviewed. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

What You Can See From Here by Mariana Leky, and brilliantly translated by Tess Harper, is a moving literary fiction novel that is a stroll through the lives of family, neighbors and a village that feel the joy and pain of love lost and found, of living and dying and of togetherness rather than loneliness. It starts with a dream of death but as we meet all those that could die or be affected by the death we slowly see it is about the need to live and to find the joy in each life. If you enjoy family stories and enlightened tales I highly recommend this unique novel.

Everyone feels comfortable doing the same thing everyday, reading the same thing 90% of the time. I love to read mysteries. I love to read thrillers. I love to read suspense. I took a chance on this book offered by NetGalley. The book, “What You Can See from Here” by Mariana Leky, was none of those. And I Loved it! It was very different from the type I normally read, again mysteries, thrillers, suspense. The story was thought provoking. I wondered while reading the book “what if I…?” The characters all had their own safety nets. Not straying far from those nets, not taking the chances of doing something else, telling people how they felt because they would have had to go beyond their comfort zone.

This is not a beach read. This is one that will get you thinking. I highly recommend it.

I thank NetGalley for the advance reading of this book.

Hey, Doug, I'm reading a novel translated from the German! Ably translated into English by Tess Lewis, who's done a really good job, in particular, of getting the song lyrics from the 1980s not quite right when the characters are explaining them to one another.

What You Can See From Here is an interesting sort of book, a bit of a slice-of-life village novel with swirls of magical realism, following the life of Luisa, a young girl doted upon by her unconventional family and friends as she grows up, through tragedy and heartbreak, to discover who she's meant to be. It's quite a sweet book for being riddled with death, as the story opens with Selma (whom we'll learn incidentally is Luisa's grandmother) having a dream of an okapi, which always heralds a death in their village. The villagers react in their own idiosyncratic ways, depending on how superstitious they ordinarily are. Still, the death when it comes is shocking, and resets the course of village life for decades to come.

Fast-forward twelve years and Luisa is twenty-two, trying to set a course for her own life and unexpectedly falling in love. There's heartbreak and healing and a lot of wise, bittersweet words as she spends the next few years coming into her own. I found myself crying almost in spite of myself at the last death in this novel, and think that overall this was very well done.  My only complaint is that I don't necessarily think the book does anything to back up the claim Luisa makes regarding Marlies near the end. A quibble tho, in the otherwise deft plotting.

Overall, WYCSFH is a liltingly written, emotionally satisfying novel of mostly kind, sometimes foolish people doing their best towards the end of the 20th century. Which sounds rather like I'm damning with faint praise, but I sincerely feel that books like this require a certain mood, a desire to be reminded that all's well that ends well, that life goes on and the best we can do is to make sure that our own lives are well-lived. I appreciated this novel because I'm almost always adjacent to that mood, but if you're looking for the sharper kinds of novelty or intellectual intrigue, this may not be the book for you. This is, however, the perfect book for a hot bath and a big glass of wine and the prospect of slipping into something warm and cozy afterwards.

What You Can See from Here by Mariana Leky was published today June 22 2021 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and is available from all good booksellers, including <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/15382/9780374288822">Bookshop!</a>

If books wore shoes, What You Can See from Here would wear slippers. It plods along so softly that you barely notice its forward movement. Then it kicks you gently in the shin to say, pay attention, I’m here and something just happened.

Originally published in German in 2017, it is primarily the story of young Luisa and her grandmother, Selma, living life in small town Germany. Whenever Selma dreams of an okapi, someone always seems to die. (Get your fingers ready to google… an okapi is a real animal that looks like a cross between a zebra and a giraffe.) The book never truly enters magical realism territory but rather hovers close to superstition, making it feel like a 20th century European fable.

It’s an odd book full of quirky characters and head-scratching plot lines. The theme of Buddhism is largely explored, along with ruminations on ill-fated love and grief. It’s a story I liked but wish I had loved. Perhaps a little was lost in translation.

3.5 stars

An English teacher 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

A tale, a fable, and some bangin’ good literature… 🔥

⏰ 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐫: Luise lives in a small town in Germany with her parents, friends, and a grandmother who dreams of an okapi right before someone dies. There’s love and loss and scads of lessons that are human. It’s a tale of simple life, a view into Luise’s world as she grows up.

💡𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬💡: There’s a fairy-tale, “other world”, almost pagan quality to this novel. A dash of Mysticism. A pinch of Magic. It feels something like a dream in places, but then realistic and down to earth in others. Symbolism is rampant in the forest, the river, and all the nature elements.

In an odd way, it reminded me a bit of stories in Native American literature where nature plays a central and pivotal role. I love where everything travels full circle, but the theme is simply “all life is a life worth living”. Sometimes upon first reading Native American Lit, I didn’t understand (much like the optician in this novel who tries to interpret Buddhist sayings), but reviewing a paragraph or two allowed me to see connections. It’s a tale… about a mismatched family in a simple town. Wonderful things happen. Terrible things happen. Life happens.

I didn’t grow up in a small town but lived in one for 3 years. The insularity was both comforting and disturbing, simultaneously. Leky wonderfully captures that feeling - being supported by a community, but also not being able to escape it. The characters - real people and their real lives are on display.

I don’t pretend to know a great deal about Buddhism (I’m probably best described as agnostic), but I do know that while it’s a religion, there are aspects that many adopt into their non-Buddhist lives, meditation being one for me. Being one with nature is a feeling I strongly associate with (#notahippie). The landscape of the town plays a role, and for me that was linked to spirituality.

😍𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨: Literati. Looking for a high-brow true literature book to sink your teeth into and analyze a bit.

🙅‍♀️ 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨: Casual, “not wanting to get too deep” readers or those looking for a quick fast-paced read.

All my reviews available at scrappymags.com around time of publication.

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Thank you to the author, NetGalley and Farar, Straus and Giroux Books for my advanced copy in exchange for my always-honest review and for getting me Lit.

What You Can See from Here by Mariana Leky was an interesting read. It starts off a bit slow, but definitely picks up as the story continues. It’s hard to describe but I would say this is a story about family, love, los and a community. It was uplifting and touching. I loved the characters, their story and the writing.

Happy reading!

I received a free electronic ARC of this excellent novel from Netgalley, author Mariana Leky, translator Tess Lewis, and publisher Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me, I have read What You Can See from Here of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. I am pleased to recommend this excellent tale to friends and family.

Our story begins on April 18, 1983. Selma is our storyteller, just a child in 1983, living in a busy household of three generations spread over several floors. Her mother has a flower shop, her father is a doctor, and most of her time, and that of her best friend Martin, is spent with her Grandmother Selma and Selma's gentleman friend, the Optician. This is a very small town, isolated and insular, somewhere in Europe. The kids take a bus to meet the train to go to school. The village inhabitants are like those of all small, insular communities, made up of fiercely individual folks who have learned over the years to rub along without too much friction with the odd exceptions, usually involving a tipsy soul. Usually involving Palm, Martin's father, if the truth is told. Marlies is testy and negative but did not require the addition of wicked drink to become unsociable.

And then everything changes. This is a stream of consciousness story, one you will not be able to set aside till the end. And then you will want more words, more stories about the other folks you grew to love in the pages of this book. Hopefully, we will see more work from Ms. Leky come our way.

I really enjoyed this jewel of a book, and I give full credit to both the author and her translator. The language and imagery of the opening paragraphs immediately drew me into the story.

Luisa’s tightly knit community includes her grandmother, a few neighbors, young and old , and “the optician”, a grandfather figure in her life. Her rather remote parents are in her life, but seem to be on the periphery. We watch Luisa grow to adulthood, and meet and fall in love with Frederik, a Buddhist monk.

Leky writes about love, community, personal growth and death. Its hard to articulate what made this book so compelling, and it will not be an easy sell, but it is easily my favorite book so far this year.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This was such an unexpected surprise! What You Can See From Here is as tender and beautiful as it is heartwarming and I cannot imagine any reader remaining unmoved.

Spellbinding writing style, fascinating, eccentric characters, memorable details, layers of meaning-all of these come together in this wonderful book about love, growing up and embracing one's identity.

It's a character-driven book with quite a large cast of quirky personalities and unique voices. The blurb has already introduced you to Luisa, the protagonist, whom we meet at several points of her life, and Selma, her grandmother, whose prophetic dreams send the villagers into a frenzy of worry and anxiety at the beginning of the book. There are many more- sad and kind, philosophical and cruel, unsettled and resigned- Mariana Leky weaves a marvellous tapestry of life in her magic, dream-like story.
Recommended to anyone who likes magical realism and is looking for an unusual, emotional and thought-provoking read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy provided in exchange for an honest opinion.

What You Can See From Here features a unique group of people from a small town. Quirky doesn’t begin to describe these characters. But that’s what makes it a good read. An early loss turns their lives around. They question love, life, death and loss. This is a truly interesting book.

This isn't what I expected at all. I loved everything from the physical aspects of the cover to the world-building, storytelling, and the plot that isn't at all what you think it is. I read that it was translated from German and that is cool also- it does have some non-North American sensibilities to it.

Magical! Reading this novel was like meeting friends that you never want to forget. The characters were so interconnected and deep. This is one of the most unique novels I have ever read. It completed transported me to the village it was set in, and I didn’t want to leave. I will recommend this to my book club and all my friends.

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. This is such a charming fable of a book. We follow the life of Luisa as a ten year old until her early thirties. When she’s ten, her grandmother Selma has a dream that foretells a coming death that will completely change Luisa’s life. During the coarse of her life we find out more about her beloved grandmother, about the optician who secretly loves her, her world traveling father, her mother who has found love with the man who owns the ice cream store and an odd cast that further make up the town, but also a young German who is now a Buddhist monk in Japan and has completely captured Luisa’s heart.

WHAT YOU CAN SEE FROM HERE is a life-affirming, charming novel that is sure to stick with you long after you turn the last page.

Luisa and the other characters in this village are fascinating and life-like in all their foibles and limitations, but most of all, in their love and compassion. They make mistakes and at times can't see past their own toes, but I was cheering for them the entire way.

There are lovely sayings and observations sprinkled like gold dust throughout the narrative. I love the descriptions and childlike innocence, the way Luisa observes and appreciates the wonders of the world. Honestly, she inspired me to regain some of that wonder.

Although I'm no expert in translation, the novel sparkles in the best of ways, leaving me to believe the translator did an amazing job at capturing Leky's poignancy--and humor, so many surprising bits of humor.

The ending is perfect and 'm impressed at how Leky wove so many threads through the story so that everything came together. This book is a treasure.

This is a difficult book to review. It is absolutely delightful. It is about a bunch of quirky people in a very quirky town in Germany. It is a book that will leave you feeling warm and happy. It is about a slice of life. Love. Coming of age. Death. Family. It is about everything and nothing. It is about life. It is a book I will recommend to everyone I know.

The narrator of the story is Luisa at three important stages of her life. When we meet her, Luisa is ten years old. Luisa begins the story like this:

"When Selma told us she had dreamed of an okapi the night before, we all knew that one of us was going to die in the next twenty-four hours. We were almost right. It took twenty-nine."

Selma is Luisa's grandmother, and an okapi is a weird mix of a giraffe and a zebra. Three times before, Selma had dreamed of an okapi, and each time, someone in town died. Naturally, as word spread of this latest dream, the town's residents began to worry. The town includes characters like Martin, Luisa's best friend. Martin's father is an angry man named Palm, who is described as "His complexion was mottled, as if he had once had feathers and someone had yanked them out." Luisa's mother and father are minor characters, who are disconnected from Luisa, as well as from one another. There is also Selma's sister-in-law Elsbeth, who is extremely superstitious, and a character known only as "the optician." The optician is in love with Selma, something everyone but Selma knows about. There is a woman known as Sad Marlies, who is basically a shut-in, and there is a dog named Alaska.

The second part of the book finds Luisa, now in her early twenties, working at a bookstore in town. One day Alaska runs off on her own. While Luisa is searching for Alaska, she runs into a group of monks -- because, of course, what's strange about a group of monks from Japan visiting a small town in Germany!! One of the monks is a young German man named Frederik, and Luisa is instantly smitten with him. By the third part of the book, everyone is a bit older but not much else has changed. The optician still loves Selma, Luisa is still in love with Frederik, but Frederik is still a monk and living in Japan. As I said, this book is about everything and nothing. People live. People love. People die. It's as simple and complicated as that.

So many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review. I honestly loved this little book.

This is a charming story, set in a small German village in the late 20th century, that has a timeless feel. The characters are fully drawn, offbeat people who accept or at least tolerate each other's quirks, and their experiences over the decades span most of what life offers.

Yes, it is sweet at times and sad at others, but it is consistently humorous and makes it clear that relationships are what hold together this tiny culture (probably all others, as well.)

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar Strauss and Giroux for an advance readers copy.