What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah

The book is a compilation of well-articulated African short stories. From the first one that is almost poetically written, its sophisticated but with an unexpected unfortunate ending of mistaken identities. The story shows how habits go down generations and kindness may sometimes, unfortunately reap more harm than good. The story presupposes that habits tend to be generational even without their seeming intent to be so. That fate or coincidence places people and occurrences on the same path similar to what their relatives/ancestors have faced before, particularly when it comes to unfortunate events.

Some stories talk of insecurities and how their root cause stems from innocent childhood activities such as jokes or misconceptions but eventually end up being full blown life-defining insecurities that affect our decision making abilities and views in adulthood.

The book gives different views of a traditional African outlook towards polygamy, poverty, parental disciplining measures and possible survival in a world where one is delt a difficult set of cards. There are sad untold stories of unintentional child abuse where even the victims rarely notices the abuse, especially where the abuse is done by a loved one. The book gives views on early introduction to sexual scenes, use of sexuality to obtain favors (by both genders) , men taking advantage of widowed/single rich women, sexual fraud and even poor mothering.

There are however some fictional stories that dint make much sense to me. From gods and goddesses at war with each other, to special humans who use a ‘magic formulae’, to tell the future in order to heal the world of their problems, to special mothers who can bring dolls to life, nah! I was not too carried away by these.

I liked reading the book. However, certain undertones of grief in some stories made me sad upon completing them. All in all, it was a good read.