#24: Some Stories Are Told in Layers
A Review of What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah
Greetings, once again dear reader! 👋🏽
I hope you are doing well and taking good care of yourself.
Welcome to another edition of this spectacular newsletter.
What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky is a collection of 12 short stories exploring the complexities of relationships between lovers, siblings, parents and children, co-workers, neighbors, etc. It’s the author’s first book and it was published in 2017.
From the unusual way the story unfolds in the first one, you know this is not your regular short story collection. It is one of the few books I have read a second time. The first time, my favorite was Wild but now, it’s Light.
In The Future is Bright, we see Ezinma go to extra lengths for her sister while Nwando’s father tells her stories from his time in the army to teach her about life in War Stories. In Wild, Ada’s mother sends her to Lagos to live with her cousin’s family because she’s had “enough” and she thought her cousin, Chinyere, would be a good influence on her. Parents can not agree on how to raise their daughter with one of them being far away in another country in Light.
“…there is this thing that distance does where it subtracts warmth and context and history and each finds that they’re arguing with a stranger.”
In Second Chances, a girl is dealing with losing her mother and feels guilty about the last fight they had and a mother seems to be “using” her child for payouts in Windfalls. Ogechi spins a baby out of hair when the one she had made out of yarn unravels and wills it to life in Who Will Greet You at Home and three generations of women are dealing with ghosts of war in Buchi’s Girls.
In What It Means When a Man Falls From The Sky, a man falls from the sky and the news sends people, along with things around them into a spiral, unearthing emotions and events once buried. Glorybetogod navigates life as a girl whose “chi is not well” in Glory while Ant and Riveer are at war in What Is a Volcano? In Redemption, a fitting end to such an incredible collection, we see a topsy-turvy friendship.
The reader has to unpack each story in this collection and I low-key think that one story can mean different things to different people. That feels intentional too.
Have you read this book? What did you think about it? Kindly leave a comment.
If you read this book after reading this review, do come back and share 😊