What You Can See From Here: 'A clear-eyed tonic in troubled times' (Guardian)

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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. The drama unfolds in a remote village, and the protagonist is a middle-aged woman, Selma, who has a special gift: she can foresee death. Each time an okapi appears in her dreams, a person in the village dies in the days that follow. Selma lives together with her granddaughter Luise, who has been hiding herself away since the untimely death of her childhood friend. It's only when a Buddhist monk comes to the village that she finds a way out of her grief and gives the power of love a chance. The film is also a portrait of rural life, a village and its unusual inhabitants. international title: A few people felt it was high time to air hidden truths. They wrote unusually wordy letters with talk of always and never. They felt one should bring truthfulness to life—at least at the very last minute. And hidden truths, these people believed, are the most truthful of all. Left untouched, they harden over the years and, being kept secret and confined to immobility, these truths grow bulkier with time. Even truth itself wants out in extremis. Anyone holding a secret truth risks an especially agonizing end, a lengthy tug-of-war with Death pulling on one side and the bloated, hidden truth on the other. A secret truth does not want to perish in hiding. Having spent its life buried, it wants to be released, even if only for a short time, either to spread its fetid stink and appall everyone, or to show that, exposed to the light of day, it isn’t so terrible or fearsome after all. Just before the supposed end, a hidden truth urgently wants a second opinion. Besonders gut haben mir die vielen melancholisch-schönen Momente gefallen, bei denen mir irgendwie gleichzeitig leicht und schwer ums Herz wurde, und die nie kitschig waren, sondern immer den richtigen Ton getroffen haben. Außerdem hat die Geschichte eine einzigartige, surreale Qualität, zu der vor allem die schrulligen Charaktere und der Schreibstil beitragen. Ich hab es als Hörbuch gehört, mir dann aber eine (gebrauchte) Ausgabe des Buches gekauft, weil ich unbedingt Passagen im Buch nochmal lesen und unterstreichen will. An sich kann ich das Hörbuch aber nur wärmstens empfehlen. Sandra Hüller spricht sehr unaufgeregt, aber eindringlich und fast schon intim. Ihre Sprechweise hat meiner Meinung nach perfekt zur Stimmung des Buches gepasst. Selma, a 60-year-old widow from the Westerwald, predicts death whenever she dreams about an okapi. The villagers, not normally prone to superstition, nevertheless fall into righteous panic and start writing their wills.

Surprisingly, we had never noticed Selma’s perfect resemblance to the Dutch television host Rudi Carrell; it took someone from outside to come and point it out to us years later. But then the resemblance hit us with full force. Selma’s long, slender body, her posture, her eyes, her nose, her mouth and hair: from head to toe, Selma resembled Rudi Carrell so perfectly that, from then on, in our eyes, he was nothing more than a poor copy of Selma. The book has some strong Buddhist themes, and though I’m not invested in those teachings, the story doesn’t hinge on that. It is ultimately a story of life- and the attitude in which one approaches it. Pain and loss are unavoidable and is something that can’t be handled any one particular way- but must be accepted as a part of life. There are some genuinely funny segments in the book and the story was wonderfully tender and heartwarming, overall. Charming . . . In her optimism and her playfulness, Leky aligns herself with other folklore enthusiasts like Helen Oyeyemi and Ali Smith . . . There is a satisfying spark to her short, declarative sentences; they induce reflection, and maybe even learning." Luna Wedler, Corinna Harfouch, Karl Markovics, Peter Schneider, Thorsten Merten, Katja Studt, Rosalie Thomass, Golo Euler, Ava Petsch, Benny Radjaipour

It's impossible to escape [Mariana Leky's] spell . . . Infectious . . . generous and funny . . . We leave [her] world knowing that every ordinary day holds the potential for something wonderful.” 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. What you can see from here follows the life of Luise and the wonderfully quirky friends and family surrounding her in their small village. Every time Selma (Luise’s grandmother) dreams of an okapi, someone dies. The book starts shortly after one of these dreams. The Hummingbird has captivated European readers, selling more than 300,000 copies in Italy alone and making Veronesi only the second author to win the Premio Strega, Italy’s most prestigious literary award, twice. The film adaptation is in production in Italy, starring Nanni Moretti (winner of the Cannes Palm d’Or) and Bérénice Bejo (nominated for an Oscar for her role in The Artist) and the novel hashe work has already been translated into 24 languages, with Elena Pala’s English translation lauded by Ian McEwan among others.

Some of the villagers avoided all activity the entire day; some even longer. Elsbeth once told Martin and me that years earlier, on the day after one of Selma’s dreams, the retired mailman had stopped moving altogether. He was convinced that any movement could mean death; he remained convinced for days, even months after Selma’s dream, long after someone had in fact died in accordance with the dream’s dictate, the shoemaker’s mother. The mailman simply stayed in his chair. His immobile joints became inflamed, his blood became clotted and finally came to a standstill halfway through his body at the very moment that his mistrusted heart stopped beating. The retired mailman lost his life from fear of losing it. On finishing What You Can See from Here, I was bereft. I dare you to try to read this book slowly. Central to the story is the idea of how much of the world to let into our lives, how much each of us can actually manage. Well, I implore you to let this book into your life. It's a wonder you won't forget." As in life, What You Can See from Here reveals its significant players and their startling joys and losses, in patient, unexpected ways. The cumulative effect of this wise storytelling is colossal. A profound and beautiful novel.”

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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. 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. Death arrived a bit late and very literally: he came in through the door. Maybe he was delayed because he had put it off for a long time, even past the last possible moment. The charm of Mariana Leky’s novel shines . . . Life and death, love and loss are portrayed with affectionate absurdity . . . [This] bittersweet tale comes into its own, unassumingly captured in this sly, understated translation.” Last year, aged 25, Daas was hailed as the voice of a new generation for her first novel, La Petite Dernière (published in English this autumn as The Last One), a first-person narrative of a young woman called Fatima navigating the contradictions of her own identity – asthmatic, not conforming to gender norms, gay, devoted to her Muslim faith, a bolshy rebel who got top grades.