I’m so glad to have picked this one up! It focuses on a mother who is battling depression and the choices that she makes. This is one of those stories that has definitely stuck with me long after I finished the last page. I can’t stop thinking about it. Definitely a very touching moving the story and I highly recommend picking it up!

Very interesting and engrossing read. Loved the magic realism and the interconnectedness of generations. Beautiful story!

This is a beautifully written book, almost poetic. Heartbreaking but a really fantastic read.

Nice story. I wish you to have access to the full book

Beautiful writing but at the expense of a story. So over-descriptive I felt I was drowning in words and never made it back to land. Not for me.

A Masterpiece

This novel is a true work of art. While, a serious reader, like myself, may not fully appreciate it I just know that the more creative, artistic, reader lives for this type of book. If a piece of writing could also be a painting, this would be it.

The author writes in beautiful, lyrical prose dancing around human feelings. I'd have much rather she got straight to the point, but there was beauty in her choice of words and her writing style. You don't find many books like this anymore.

It took a while to comprehend the story being told, that of a mother suffering from depression and alcoholism while looking after her little girl. The story shifts perspectives, but is primarily told by the daughter.

It was an intensely tough subject for any story but the writing really put me under a kind of spell, there is no better description for the feeling. I was calm which meant I was completely surprised at the details slowly unfolding. The writing made the story that much more triggering and heartfelt.

I received this book through NetGalley

Sorry but I could not get into this book so I didn't finish. Too disjointed for me.

Foremost I would like to thank the author and Netgalley for a copy of the ebook.

I enjoyed reading this story. Its message was very thought provoking. Loved the magical realism in this book especially Angela's character. Unfortunately, with the advanced technology we have, children will no longer know the beauty that lies behind our imagination. lovely story.

Angela lives with her mother Lyuda in Ukraine. Her mother is depressed and Angela, with help of her dead Grandmother, tries to help her mother overcome her deep sorrow. Through the imagery, we explore alternative timelines for Lyuda, to explore whether she would have been happier having made different choices.

For me though I just found it a bit to fairy-tale, and confused as I didn’t really know where the story was going. I don’t think I read the description properly when I requested this, as I was expecting something a bit harsher reality, rather than esoteric, and was therefore a bit confused as to what was going on.

The beautiful writing has stayed with me, and the descriptions are lovely, but it was just to much fairy tale for me.

Well, I don’t know if you should call this a novel at all. You might call it a poem. Or a piece of music. It ripples and flows, it turns on itself. It’s beautiful.



I have a tendency to read for plot, and this hardly has a conventional plot at all. There is a story, and it’s an age old story of love and loss, but it’s the way that it’s told that is so engaging. There are themes and motifs that recur – the river, the rope, the bird, the dancing child – as if the writer is creating a new mythology, making new images out of the same set of picture tiles. There’s a sense of place and of culture that is subtle but powerful. Basically, you’ll either love it or just not get it. You should try it, though, because if you do you'll discover something really special.

The opening chapters of Leonora Meriel’s dreamy novel, set in rural Bukovina—a region in southwest Ukraine that borders Romania and includes the Carpathian Mountains—introduce us to a young girl and her mother. Seven-year old Angela revels and luxuriates in the natural world. She is exquisitely sensitive to the beauty and fragrance of the starlike flowers of the lilac tree she lies beneath and the aroma of the black earth that supports her. Her imagination whisks her into the body of a singing bird, and at night she travels above her small faded brick house with her protective Nightspirit (a guardian angel figure). Angela’s beloved mother, Lyuda epitomizes safety for the girl; she is “every comfort to every sorrow”. But all is not well with Lyuda, who is haunted by the events of a winter night. She regularly asks herself how it is she did not die, and she has an evening ritual of drinking home-brewed vodka to dissolve distressing thoughts and to calm “the tears which are always there, a silent waterfall behind each and every breath.”

By the fourth chapter, the reader learns that this fictional world is infused with a sort of cosmic energy. The stars possess consciousness. They “are the light at the beginning of all understanding” and bear a kind of divine witness to all the possibilities in a single moment. The protagonist, Angela, is the archetypal Wordsworthian child figure, “trailing clouds of glory.” Since her mind is still open to the mystery of the universe—the “dream”—the stars can still pour themselves into her, allowing her to transfer light and knowledge where it is needed. Inevitably, though, the doorways to the infinite will close, and she will find herself in a single narrow tunnel—as humans inevitably do. (Whether I’ve explained this correctly, I’m not sure. The writing in this book can be pretty mystical and fuzzy.)

It turns out that Lyuda, Angela’s mother, is the one most in need of light. She is angered and saddened to the point of being suicidal. Volodiya—her much older lover and Angela’s father—abandoned her years before. From the beginning, Lyuda’s mother, Zoryana, had been opposed to her 17-year-old daughter’s relationship with this much older man, a stranger who had arrived in the village to work as a builder. Zoryana is now dead, but she is able to appear to her spiritually gifted granddaughter. Together with Angela’s Nightspirit, Zoryana has determined that Angela needs to become an instrument in her mother’s healing. The remainder of the novel is dedicated to showing how that happens.

The novel’s second part briefly provides the backstory to Lydia’s despair: her unplanned pregnancy, her parents’ sudden deaths, and Volodiya’s abandonment of her. The screaming infant and Lyuda’s post-natal depression were threatening to turn him into a wife-beating brute like his father; he felt it was better to leave than do physical harm.

However, the backstory is not the major focus of this part of the book. The author’s real interest is in the magical actions Angela must perform (with her grandmother’s and the Nightspirit’s guidance) to free her mother from despair. Because of Angela’s spiritual gifts, Lyuda gets the chance to experience an alternative reality, in which one set of blessings and regrets is exchanged for another. In this “other life”, Lyuda does not have a child and is not abandoned by Volodiya. Instead, the two are living their original dream of worldly success and plenty. However, there is a great price for the happiness in this other possible version of life. Still, the feeling that life has been ruined (albeit by a different choice) persists.

In the novel’s third and most problematic section, Angela’s grandmother tells her that there is now some hope for her mother. Lyuda is beginning to recognize that there are different paths and that she might possibly alter the one she is on. Angela’s grandmother instructs the girl: “Show her your world and perhaps she will understand it.” And that is what Angela apparently does—I say “apparently” because I honestly didn’t have a clue as to what was going on for pages at a time in this last section of the book. Was Lyuda having a psychotic breakdown induced by alcohol intoxication? It seemed like it, but who knows? Hot mess would be one way of describing the writing here.

With its somewhat exotic Carpathian-mountain setting and its otherworldly presences, Meriel’s novel is a strange and unusual fantasy. While there is some capable writing here—including many lyrical descriptions of the natural world and some lovely scenes depicting aspects of Ukrainian culture—they aren’t enough to rescue this book. I found the plot revolving around a mother’s sadness just too thin to be satisfying, and occasionally too melodramatic and twee to appreciate. I really wanted to like The Woman Behind the Waterfall, but I was sorely tempted to abandon it many times. After about a dozen chapters I’d grown impatient with Lyuda’s tears (the “waterfall” of them regularly running down her face, sometimes flavouring the soup) and her nightly vodka-consumption ritual. Likewise, repeated descriptions of Angela lying under the lilac tree, her projection of her spirit into the bodies of birds, and her adventures in the dreamworld became cloying. Beyond drawing well water, dancing in the garden or by the river, swimming, and making various Ukrainian foods—pirogies, potatoes, and honey cake— there isn’t much action in what feels like a very long book. I believe there is an audience for fiction about motherhood and the ties that bind generations of women, but I don’t think this book would be all that accessible to that audience. Whatever the case, it didn’t “speak to me” as they say. Though the novel’s genre was listed as literary fiction/fantasy, the actual description of it on Net Galley led me to expect a slightly more realistic story about less ethereal characters more firmly rooted in the Ukrainian earth. Instead, there was an awful lot of traveling through silver tunnels, riding golden waves, and grabbing onto metaphorical ropes. On the whole, it was all a bit too nebulous, vaporous, and confusing for me. I am sorry to say I really didn’t like this book. At all.

I would like to acknowledge the author, the publisher, and Net Galley for providing me with a digital advance reading copy of this book for review purposes.

I wanted to love this book but I just did not get it. I felt like I was reading someone's draft for a novel. None of it made sense or flowed for me. It reminded me of when you and your friends are drunk/high and you get into these deep conversations that have no point or meaning. I really don't have a clue what I just read. I'm surprised to see so many high ratings so maybe it has just gone way over my head and others will be able to open themselves up to it. I wish Meriel all the best as it seems many people can appreciate the beauty of her work but unfortunately it does not resonate with me.

The Woman Behind The Waterfall by Leonora Meriel
This book was so interesting, magical and realistic at the same time. It is about a strong connection between three generations of women in the same family, in a small Ukrainian village .
It is the story of their bond, which is so tight that even in death they are able to communicate to help each other through thought and dream, to keep their family unit from disintegrating.
At times I was a little lost in the story, where I think she (the author) was showing us what some of the different outcomes could be for the mother(Lyuda) and daughter (Angela).
The descriptions of the garden, the countryside and the village are wonderful, the author has a very lyrical and fanciful way of writing.
Angela, is always happy and seeing the best of life, she has the ability to become other things, a bird, a flower, the river and see and enjoy their point of view.
Lyuda , the mother because of certain circumstances in the story, has become depressed and sad, she is stuck in her past yet trying to be there for Angela.
The Grandmother, who is no longer alive has the gift of love which she tries to communicate to her daughter and Angela, and to help them to break a negative thread which is keeping Lyuda in her past memories.
Here is a wonderful piece from the book where the river is saying:
“Throw me your past, throw me your memories. Throw me your sorrows and I will carry them away. My waters are always clear. Whatever is given to me, I release. If you hold on to the memories of what you were, you will never become something that you are not.”
I am not really sure I have given this book a fair review as I find it a bit hard to describe, yet I can say it is well worth reading, so that you can make up your own minds, it is definitely quite a fascinating journey.
I would like to thank NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for the ARC of this book.

Thank you so much to booksgosocial via netgalley for sending me an ARC copy of the women behind the waterfall by Leonora Merial.

Not your happy feel good story.
A child shouldnt have to take the pain and burdens of the parents.
As a young girl she comes to her mother crying and thats when she starts to take all the pain and bad choices that her parents have made and hold on to them, to help them will hurt her but shes being a good daughter.
It was emotional and beautiful.

Life is beautiful and simple when you're a child and in this case, Angela's only seven, and she enjoys life out in lush countryside they reside in.
However, children are also observant and her mother's sorrows are not lost on her and what starts as a few tears opens up a world of memories, hurt and her mother's desire to drown in them.
The story is set in Ukraine and I found the writing part mystical, part enchanting so much so that I could not place the book in an genre and I reckon that's a good thing. Angela seems to be floating on air, in a world full of bliss, beauty and magic and her mother is outside looking in, that's how their relationship felt like to me.
I received a copy of this book off NetGalley in exchange for a review.