Mariana Leky (2017 [2021]) What You Can See From Here, translated by Tess Lewis.

What does your summer reading tell about you?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd69glgl2jzo

I’m grumpy. I had to search for the translator’s name. It wasn’t included on the cover or listed in the first few cover pages of the English paperback of Mariana Leky’s international bestseller released in 2021. It was translated from the German for Bloomsbury by Tess Lewis.   

Translation is an art. Her name should have been on the front cover, not the back.

I’m picky. I looked at the reviews. As you’d expect, Observer and New York Times loved it. Nina George (who must be a famous author) writes for Paris Bookshop.

‘I loved this novel truly, madly, deeply.’

I didn’t. I read the first few chapters.  That was enough.

I liked the idea of it.  Set in a small German village, Westwald. Where everyone knows each other’s business. I’m not sure if there is a real village called Westwald, but we all know places like that. You might even live in one.

Nothing much ever happens. That’s a good start. Baseline. You’ve got the narrator, Luisa, aged ten.

The inciting incident is quirky. That appealed to me.

Picking a book argues Edgar Dubourg, a cognitive scientist at the École Normale ‘It's definitely not a random choice,’ Supérieure in Paris. ‘Your reading list is basically a map of your personality’.

I must have failed that test as I failed many others. Perhaps I don’t have a personality (a person plus their personality). That should worry me. It doesn’t. Which is a worry.

In the same way that the villagers in Westwald become worried when Selma dreams of an okapi. She  blurts it out and tells her granddaughter (the narrator). You probably don’t know what an okapi is. There’s a picture on the cover. Looks like an antelope with zebra markings.

Selma should really keep it a secret. She’s old enough to know that when her granny dreams of an okapi then someone in the village dies.

A brilliant jumping off point. Only it didn’t jump for me as it did for tens of thousands of other readers.

Psychologist, Dr Valerie van Mulukom, explains. She argues our inner anxieties (existential angst) determine which book we pick from the shelf.

I picked a book about dying because I’ve got cancer. I’m going to die. I didn’t finish it. Therefore I’ll live forever. I quite like that idea. I’ve tried it with other books and it seems to be working.  But I don’t really want to live forever either.

Matching existential angst with our life can be boring. Van Mulukom offers a super-handy checklist in which you can read off to determine what kind of person and personality you really are.

What You Can See From Here:

• Epic other-world adventures (action, adventure, science fiction, dystopian/post-apocalyptic, fantasy)
• Everyday life and human relationships (comedy, romantic, drama, family, musical)
• Threat and danger (true crime, crime/mystery/thriller, horror)
• Facts and histories (documentary, biography, historical)

Yes, to epic otherworld adventure and magic realism.

Yes, to everyday life and human relationships. The Optician is madly in love with Selma. They’re best friends. But he just can’t tell her.

Yes, to threats and danger. Somebody is going to die.

Yes, to facts and histories. Factional. Kinda but not really.

So my subconscious mind is telling me I can’t resist murder or death or both. I love romance. Too easily caught in the web of magical realism. But prefer factional and non-fiction.

I knew there was a reason for unreason. My subconscious is telling me this book is a lot of... But I’m not listening. Nor am I reading it. You might. Read on.