"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.
