Sky above the Roof

I found The Sky Above the Roof to be quite a strange novella and, even after a couple of days mulling the book over, I'm still not sure whether I really enjoyed it or not. I did love Nathacha Appanah's poetic writing style which I thought Geoffrey Strachan did a wonderful job of rendering into English, however I found the switching between so many different voices didn't work for me. It seemed as though as soon as I had got to know one person, the narrative focus changed to another. Admittedly they were all ultimately telling the same overall story, but perhaps within a longer book I would have found the frequent changes less distracting.

It was interesting to see how the dysfunction in this dysfunctional family had come about, especially how the actions and decisions of one generation impacted on subsequent generations so Phoenix's emotional reaction to her childhood was directly responsible for the way in which she raised her own children even though it did not seem to be a conscious decision on her part. I would have liked to explore more how much her parenting style was responsible for Wolf's ultimate behaviour. The nature versus nurture debate. I wonder if The Sky Above the Roof would benefit from more than one reading in order to reveal its full depths. Personally I thought it was too short for everything I felt it was trying to say.