What You can See From Here by Mariana Leky, Bloomsbury

Every word in this beautiful novel is a jewel, as we join the German Westerwald community, where inhabitants take in the abandoned and lost. Luisa, 10, lives with her grandma Selma. Her florist mother lives upstairs. Her doctor father adventures abroad. Luisa and friend Martin are taught by “the optician”, who shows them how to tell time under the station clock. If Selma has a vision of an okapi (giraffe/zebra cross) it means someone will die. A shocking death occurs. In part two Luisa, 22, is a bookseller. Martin’s drunk father hasn’t touched a drop for 12 years. Leky is a wordsmith and what we witness fills our hearts.