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

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

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

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Now that the one-child policy has been relaxed, the stories of these illegal children will soon be a part of China’s national collective memory. But to those who grew up tainted with this humiliation, the scars are permanent. One is Chinese writer Shen Yang, who wrote her story in part to extinguish the nightmares that still haunt her. A tale of life, loss, and the limitless joy of love. Above all else, this book manages to achieve that rarest of literary feats: it makes you happy . . . A gift to be savored." The following is excerpted from Mariana Leky's novel, What You Can See From Here , translated by Tess Lewis. Leky was born in Cologne and currently lives in Berlin. She writes a monthly column for the magazine Psychologie Heute, and her books have earned numerous prizes, including the Allegra Prize. Lewis is a writer and translator of French and German. Her translations include works by Peter Handke, Walter Benjamin, and Klaus Merz, among many others.

I wanted to write a book about such big and vague issues that I felt I needed to locate them in a place that could be contained,” she adds. “I write about love and death, and how they are connected – it doesn’t get more diffuse than that.” Philip Oltermann I’m trying to find a way to cope with it. I was worried that I would burn out, but I think it’s important to talk about this – not just rape, but the harassment that follows anyone who speaks out,” she says. A] whimsical love story . . . peopled by eccentric-but-endearing characters . . . There is enough candor and humor, along with a handful of bracingly moody characters, to make Leky's vision of perpetual love compelling."

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Shortly after she was born, Shen Yang was smuggled to her grandparents’ house in a nearby city. At the age of five, she was adopted by her uncle and aunt until she was 16, to avoid the authorities’ attention. But they had an unhappy marriage, punctuated by rows and bouts of domestic violence. Effervescent, tender, and realistically absurd—an utterly charming depiction of life, death, love, and the people who help us through it all. What You Can See from Here is exactly the kind of novel I am ever hoping to discover.” We probably shouldn’t take it too seriously,” Selma said, but like a TV detective who is not taking an anonymous letter too seriously.

I wish to thank the author and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an advance copy to review via NetGalley. What You Can See from Here is now available.

Reviews

My father claimed it was complete and utter nonsense and that our delusion came from the fact that we allowed too little of the world into our lives. He was always saying: “You’ve got to let more of the world in.” A tale of life, loss, and the limitless joy of love. Above all else, this book manages to achieve that rarest of literary feats: it makes you happy . . . A gift to be savored.”

While we waited for the train, Martin practiced lifting me. Martin had been training to be a weight lifter since kindergarten, and I was the only weight that was always at hand and never objected to being lifted. The twins from the upper village only let him lift them if he paid twenty pfennig each, grown-ups and calves were still too heavy for him, and everything else that might have been an adequate challenge—saplings, half-grown pigs—was either firmly rooted to the spot or would run away.

I looked at Martin’s part. His father had combed his blond hair with a wet comb and a few strands were still dark. The only one who was happy about Selma’s dream was old Farmer Häubel, a man who had lived so long he was almost transparent. When his great-grandson told him about Selma’s dream, Farmer Häubel stood up from the breakfast table, nodded at his great-grandson, and climbed the stairs to his room in the attic. He lay down on his bed and watched the door like a birthday boy awoken early with excitement waiting impatiently for his parents to finally bring in the cake. Outside her birth home in Shandong province, slogans were papered everywhere: “If you have children illegally, we will legally demolish your house”, and “One excess birth and the whole village gets their tubes tied!” Local authorities used this propaganda to stop “extras” like Shen being born.It was even worse for a girl; Shen was the second daughter, with a sister who was four years older. In rural China, despite the stringent one-child policy, authorities would sometimes allow couples whose first child was a daughter to have a second – as long as he was a boy. Boys could be used as manual labour to help feed the family, go to big cities to work and, when they married, sustain the family’s bloodline.

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.Mariana Leky’s What You Can See from Here will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on June 22, 2021. The musical quality of the novel is key – the story races along with the pace of a song or a poem, punctuated by the repeated line “My name is Fatima Daas”. It deliberately reads as if being spoken aloud – in contrast to the “absolute silence” the character grows up in. Daas says it was a way for her to say, as a novelist: “I exist, I am, I love, I want”. Kάθε φορά που βλέπει αυτό το όνειρο είναι σαν ένας οιωνός θανάτου για τους κατοίκους του χωριού, ενας οιωνός τον οποίο δε μπορούν να μην φοβούνται. Στο πρώτο μέρος λοιπόν του βιβλίου και προσωπικά αγαπημένο δικό μου κομμάτι, οι ήρωες φοβισμένοι από την «προφητεία» της Ζέλμα ξεκινούν να γράφουν γράμματα. Μέσα σε αυτά τα γράμματα υπάρχουν θαμμένα μυστικά, απόκρυυφες σκέψεις και επιθυμίες. Όταν τελικά ο θάνατος φτάνει η συγγραφέας με μια απίστευτη συγγραφική δεινότητα θα καταδείξει υπέροχα πως μια ολόκληρη κοινότητα επηρεάζεται από το γεγονός, πως διαχειρίζονται την απώλεια και πως δε μπορούν πολλές φορές να ξεφύγουν από πράγματα και καταστάσεις. Η απώλεια που θα συμβεί είναι μια απώλεια που δε θα ξεχαστεί, που είναι δύσκολο να τη διαχειριστούν οι ήρωες μας. Ωστόσο η ζωή συνεχίζεται. Στο δεύτερο μέρος η ιστορία κάνει ένα άλμα μερικών ετών μπροστά και βλέπουμε την εγγονή της Ζέλμα, Λουίζε να έχει πλέον ενηλικιωθεί, να έχει γνωρίσει τον έρωτα με έναν μοναχό. Για να είμαι απόλυτα ειλικρινής χωρίς σε καμιά περίπτωση να υποβιβάζω την αξία του βιβλίου το δεύτερο μέρος προσωπικά με κέντρισε λιγότερο. Εχοντας πλέον διαβάσει ολόκληρο το βιβλίο αντιλαμβάνομαι ότι ήταν περισσότερο ένα βιβλίο ενηλικίωσης της Λουίζε, εγγονής τη Ζέλμα όμως κατά κάποιο τρόπο ένιωσα μια μικρή αναγνωστική εξαπάτηση καθώς περιμένα ή λανθασμένα είχα φανταστεί ότι ήταν το βιβλίο της Ζέλμα. Σαν να έχασα λίγο από τον ενθουσιασμό μου. Παραλείποντας αυτή την καθαρά προσωπική διαπίστωση και με το τρίτο κεφάλαιο να μου αφήνει μια ευχάριστη επίγευση, μπορώ να πω ότι αδιαπραγμάτευτα το όνειρο της ζέλμα είναι ένα γλυκό και παραμυθένιο βιβλίο που σου ξυπνάει τις αισθήσεις. Είναι από εκείνα τα βιβλία που ζεσταίνουν την ψυχή σου, θα σε κάνει να κλαψεις, να γελάσεις και να θυμηθείς ότι στο τέλος της μέρας αυτό που πραγματικά είναι σημαντικό είναι να καταλαβούμε ότι η ζωή συμβαίνει γύρω μας και πρεπει να είμαστε παρόντες και να μην την αφήνουμε να μας προσπερνά. Η απώλεια, ο πόνος για την απώλεια είναι μέρος της αλυσίδας της ζωής και όσο και αν δε θέλουμε να την βιώσουμε αυτό είναι αναπόφευκτο και θα πρέπει να το αποδεχτούμε γιατί είναι και αυτή μέρος της ζωής μας.



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