Books from Finland - A literary journal of writing from and about Finland.

Everything seems fine. A middle-class pastor’s family has found their place in the world. The holy family – husband, wife, and son – have been getting up for years without questioning the new day. But when the son leaves home, the coupIe’s thirty-year marriage soon goes flat like champagne left to stand in a glass overnight.

Pirkko Saisio’s novel Voimattomuus (‘Powerlessness’, WSOY, 2005) is not merely an ordinary family drama or love triangle story. It is an extraordinarily sharp analysis of the people of our time. Saisio (born 1949) is a writer and theatre professional who has no difficulty in building her various sets in such a way that the people she places in them have flesh and blood, and an economical dramaturgy courses through events. More…