What You Can See from Here: A Novel

Mariana Leky

Jun 2021 · Sold by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About this ebook

“I loved this novel truly, madly, deeply.” —Nina George, bestselling author of The Book of Dreams and The Little Paris Bookshop

In this international bestseller by the award-winning novelist Mariana Leky, 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.

Ratings and reviews

NOTE: I received early access to this book through NetGalley in exchange for writing an impartial review. Originally published in 2017 in German, it has now been translated into English by Tess Lewis with a scheduled publication date of June 22, 2021. What a completely delightful read! While I find it hard to describe what exactly makes this novel so enjoyable, let me say that it feels like Mariana Leky's style combines some of the best qualities of Jane Austen with Fredrik Backman. Like Austen, it’s a study of small town life, where not much happens, but somehow everything ordinary people do everyday is full of drama. And like Backman (Austen too), there is SO MUCH humor woven into the narrative. Almost as though the book is reminding us NOT to take our lives too seriously. This is a book where the author's unique style enhances the story. At the start of the book, the central protagonist, Luisa, and her best friend Martin are inseparable. Luisa’s parents do not give her the attention she deserves. Fortunately, her widowed grandmother Selma (whose dreams also predict the future) provides all the security and love Luisa could want. There are other meaningful relationships — with the reclusive Marlies, the superstitious Elsbeth, the remote hunter (and Martin's father) Palm, the ever attentive village optician, Dietrich, the bookshop owner, Mr. Rodder, even a psychotherapist, Dr. Maschke. Later, a Buddhist monk named Frederik joins in. As years pass, these characters support each other through tragedies, separations, secrets, attempted murder, and love affairs... while accepting each other’s quirks and foibles. So that the book becomes a lovely tale of how much we can all offer one another, when we don't let personal judgements get in the way. It's a very enjoyable book, full of love, and I recommend it to everyone. And I will look for more books by Mariana Leky.

About the author

Mariana Leky was born in Cologne and currently makes her home in Berlin. After training as a bookseller, she studied cultural journalism at the University of Hildesheim.Though she is one of the very few members of her family who are not psychologists, she still writes a monthly column for the magazine Psychologie Heute. Her books have earned numerous prizes, including the Allegra Prize, the Lower Saxony Literary Advancement Award, and the Advancement Prize for Young Artists from the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Before being published in twenty-one languages, What You Can See from Here was named the German Booksellers’ Favorite Book of the Year and became a runaway bestseller.

Tess Lewis is a writer and translator from the French and German. Her translations include works by Peter Handke, Walter Benjamin, Klaus Merz, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Christine Angot, Pascal Bruckner, and Jean-Luc Benoziglio.