What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky
Realism and fable blur together. A mathematician solves grief. A girl is traded to a witch. Arimah's range is startling.
'What Is a Volcano?,' the fable about a feud between the god of ants and the goddess of rivers, is the story readers repeatedly name the weakest, saying it “leaned too heavily on the magical metaphors.” The title story's ending doesn't pay off its premise as hard as the setup promises for some, and the constant swings from folk tale to sci-fi to domestic realism from one story to the next leave readers saying it's “hard for me to get a hold on these stories.” At least one reader found two of the twelve “slow enough that I ended up not finishing them.” Readers who prefer sustained realism say Arimah is “on less sure footing when she covered territory” closer to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's ground.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
