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

I'm not one for short story collections. Of course, expertly done ones grab my attention, but for the most part I prefer following characters for longer arcs and full novels. It's just a strange preference that I've always had.

But the moment I saw What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky in the bookstore, I knew I wanted to read it. The title grabbed my attention instantly and the cover was beautiful and the back cover was full of praise so high, I decided to take a leap.

And I'm so glad I did.

Every story in this collection is engrossing, developed, diverse, and spoke to me in various different ways.

Arimah's prose was stunning and clean, effortless in the one liners and wise descriptions she provided. Throughout the whole collection, there were clear themes that stayed consistent: race, class, gender, etc. and it was tasteful and done with the hand of an expert. She wrote with the passion of someone who had suffered, developed the stories with the cleanliness of premeditation and hard work, and she created a rich collection that forces you to look at the world around you and how you fit into it.

It's rare that I find an author who truly makes me wonder, who sends my mind into spirals and who makes their writing both an escape and a painfully real commentary on the world. Arimah does it with ease, allowing you to fall into these worlds but forcing you to take a step back at the same time and look at our very own.

The characters were rich and faceted, and Arimah's eye for detail was so keen that even side characters or people with mentions seem developed, real, and I think that adds the texture to this collection that makes it so compelling. From what the characters wore, to how they spoke, to what they noticed, it was all in line and all delivered cleanly.

I think of these stories, almost every single one engrossed me from the moment the story began to the moment if finished. I cannot say that about many other anthologies.

Occasionally, they fell short in their pacing or in their development. For example, the title story, What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky, spanned a futuristic world that discussed both the human hunger for what we see as advancement as well as international relations. Arimah threw us right into the story which was engaging but at times a little bit confusing. It felt like it was reaching to show her versatility (which Arimah absolutely has) but there just wasn't room to fully develop this new world and the strange dynamics that we were dealing with in my opinion.

Overall, it's simply an impressive collection that has depth and skill that struck me blindsided.

Characters: 100%
Plot: 95%
Depth: 100%
Style: 100%
Intrigue: 85%
Overall Rating: A