‘Leaves other tales told from a child's-eye view in the dust... An intricate and tender novel.’
Things that Fall from the Sky
Longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, 2021
Description
WINNER OF THE 2016 EU PRIZE FOR LITERATURE
One quirk of fate can send life spiralling in the most unexpected direction...
A young girl loses her mother when a block of ice falls from the sky. A woman wins the jackpot twice. A man is struck by lightning four times. Coincidence? Or something more?
Things That Fall from the Sky is the tale of three lives that are changed forever by random events. But it is also a meditation on the endurance of love, the passage of time and the pain of loss. Selja Ahava, one of Finland's best-loved novelists, weaves these stories together in an unforgettable, one-of-a-kind fable about the twists and turns that can define a lifetime.
Reviews
‘A whimsical and thoughtful rumination on the terrifying randomness that dictates the course of a life... Ahava’s rendering of Saara recalls the first-person intimacy of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) and serves as an example of what strong writers can do with simple sentences.’
‘A literary fairy tale... People who live in cold climates need stories that can be spun and unspun around warm hearths.’
‘Ahava embraces the eccentricities of her characters and the role of randomness in the novel's plot, pivoting from a meditation on grief into something closer in tone to the Ricky Jay-narrated prologue of Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia.’
