Monica Fagerholm is an award-winning Finnish author, whose books have found a large audience not only in Finland but also in other Nordic countries. She is also one of the not so many Finnish authors whose books have been translated into English. Her novel Wonderful Women by the Water was a huge success in Finland, as was the movie made from the novel. In February another one of her novels, The American Girl, was published in the US by Other Press.
I find it interesting to see which Finnish books get translated into English, as sometimes it seems quite random. Many books well worth a wider audience (we are less than 5,5 million here) never get translated and of those that do not so many into English. I don't know, there probably aren't so many possible Finnish to English translaters out there, or maybe it is a question of marketing... I mention the Finnish to English translators because Finland is a bilingual country (the national languages are Finnish and Swedish) and just by browsing the translated Finnish fiction section in my favorite bookstore I got the feeling that just maybe Swedish to English translaters are easier to find. Finnish just isn't one of the world languages and compared to Swedish it surely is much harder to master for an English speaker -well, for anyone (exept maybe for our southern neighbours the Estonians) probably! ;) Monika Fagerholm belongs to Finland's Swedish speaking minority. So, as I read The American Girl in Finnish, I , too, was reading a translation. :) And why was The American Girl translated into English and published in the US? In addition to its literary merits I guess the answer to my question is rather obvious... ;)
The American Girl starts in late 1960s with Edwina (Eddie) de Wire, an American girl, coming to a small Swedish speaking community near Helsinki, Finland to visit relatives and later she drowns in a pond. When Eddie's Finnish boyfriend Björn then hangs himself lots of speculation on his role in Eddie's death follows. The novel, however, is not a thriller, it is a multifaceted coming of age story concentrating mostly, but not solely, on two girls, best friends Sandra and Doris, who later also have a sexual relationship with each other. Doris had a very difficult early childhood with abusive parents while Sandra had a cleft lip (that was later operated) and lived in the shadow of her glamorous parents. Both girls get almost obsessed with the fate of the American girl and try to find out what really happened to her.
Fagerholm's language is innovative and she uses a kind of ebbing and flowing writing style consisting of many fragments of the story told by multiple narrators. The Finnish translation is excellent. I hope Katarina E. Tucker's English translation is, too. The sequal to The American Girl was published here in October. According to Kyle Semmel's review of The American Girl the sequal will be published in English next year.
I enjoyed reading The American Girl. I liked Fagerholm's writing style, which some might find confusing, but I found quite fabulous and I also liked the tragic story of Sandra and Doris. I already borrowed the sequal from the library and will start reading it soon. I highly recommend The American Girl to anyone wanting to read some more Northern European lit!
I will count The American Girl towards my personal FINNishing Up -challenge. I am so lagging behind in this challenge...
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