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

Sinulle, yö
[To you, the night]
Helsinki: WSOY, 2009. 268 p.
ISBN 978-951-0-35599-2
€ 29, hardback

In Teemu Kaskinen’s debut novel, Finland is at war with Norway and its NATO ally the United States. Fierce battles rage in the winter darkness in Lapland, and Helsinki has become the stage for a contemporary war, which seems rather ridiculous – except for the fact that there are neighbouring countries currently at war with each other after having previously coexisted peacefully for ages, and it would be easy to name several thriving cities whose streets have suddenly been filled with soldiers, bomb blasts and terror. In this novel by Kaskinen (born in 1976; he has previously written four plays) the streets and interiors are also filled with lust and the satisfaction of basic needs. In cool, modernistic episodes, the author shows how people’s instincts begin to drag them along in a crisis situation. Sinulle, yö is a grotesque, brutal novel – but then again, what would happen if you, I and the neighbour’s lad ended up in similar circumstances, like those that engulfed Sarajevo not all that long ago?

Lolauppochner
[Lola upside down]
Helsinki: Schildts & Söderströms, 2012. 461 p.
ISBN 978-951-52-2997-7
€ 31, hardback

Lola ylösalaisin
Suomentanut [Translated into Finnish by]: Liisa Ryömä
Helsinki: Teos, 2012. 300 p.
ISBN 978-951-851-480-3
€28.40, hardback

Lolauppochner (‘Lola upside down’) is a more authentic crime novel than the same author’s Den amerikanska flickan (English translation: The American Girl, 2004) and Glitterscenen (The Glitter Scene, 2009), though they too wove their dense fiction around an old crime. Readers who are at ease in Fagerholm’s luxuriant wordscapes with their tragic teens, country bumpkins and summer visitors will still be able to find their way around the small community where Jana Marton, a teenage girl on the way to her job at the local store, discovers the corpse of a boy, a key player among the local gilded youth. The novel’s opening, and many sections that follow, are extremely effective, with sharp and lightning-swift characterisations and a fine intuition for both the fear and the excitement in the social circle where the murder turns up hidden connections like worms from the soil. But the novel is too long for its own good – somewhere towards the end it ceases to gain depth, and the gallery of characters starts to feel too big. All the same, this book is a must for Fagerholm’s readership at home and abroad. A bonus for locals – and attentive outsiders – is present in the outlines of the small seaside town of Ekenäs that can be glimpsed behind the text. They supply a kind of physical magic that rubs off on much else besides – characters, moods and sense of place.
Translated by David McDuff