What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky

I am in love with Lesley’s writing, and everyone should be. Period. I will recommend this book a thousand times. The first time I read it, I was left feeling hopeful–hopeful that stories are soft, intentional, deliberate, magical things that can shift people and places enough to make a difference or change minds. With each story in this collection, Lesley peels away the layers (sometimes softly, sometimes jarring) of lives, relationships, and women.

I loved this book because it is a collection of bizarre, weird, surreal, fabulist tales that tripped me up each time I thought I knew where it was going. The twists! The turns! The things that had no business existing in anyone's mind, let alone in print. Not one dud in this collection of fourteen stories. 

Also, I learnt that I could applaud while puking up my lunch. That was fun.

I fell in love with short stories in my preteen years. Chinua Achebe, Kola Onadipe, and Cyprian Ekwensi were my fictional gods until the passage of time brought the creative wonder woman, Alice Munro, into my life. 

However, as a Nigerian, it was in Lesley Nneka Arimah’s narrative universe that I first saw myself as a speaking, living, welcome presence in the crazy world we live in.

I’m weird, like the characters in this collection. There was a time when fitting-in was a big question for me, and like the characters, I felt troubled by the ugly truth that may… show more.