No and Me

Is it weird to want to read a novel because the author has such a beautiful name? :) That is what happened when I first saw No and Me by Delphine de Vigan. Delphine, isn't that a lovely first name?

Delphine de Vigan is a well-known, but new to me, French author of several novels. No and Me is the first of her books to be translated into English. It is a story of Lou Bertignac, a highly intelligent, thirteen-year-old Parisian loner, whose mother is suffering from severe depression because of something tragic that has happened in the family. Lou likes to escape her life by wandering on Gare d'Austerlitz railway station. There she meets a few years older homeless girl, who calls herself No. Lou decides to make No the subject of her class project and little by little she gets No talking about her life. After the project is finished No suddenly disappears. Lou is heartbroken and keeps looking for No. When she asks her parents if No could come and live with them, her parents unexpetedly say yes. Lou finally finds No and takes her home. Trying to help a young woman who has been severely neglected and hurt might, however, prove to be more that the Bertignacs bargained for.

No and Me tells many stories. It is a book about being an outsider, about homelessness and neglect, how parents can let their children down in many different ways, but it is also a book about friendship, healing and trust. I loved the character of Lou. She reminded me very much of another young, intelligent girl in another French novel, namely Paloma Josse in The Elegance of the Hedgehog, though Lou did not have any suicidal thoughts. I also loved the mixture of maturity and innocence in Lou. She is very capable of many things, but as a narrator she does not understand everything she sees, and the adult reader becomes very aware of this along the way, especially after No's life takes a turn for the worse again.

No and Me was originally published in France in 2007 as No et moi. It was translated into English by George Miller. In 2008 the French original won the prestitious Booksellers' Prize in France.

No and Me was a joy to read. Despite the fact that it deals with difficult subjects like homelessness and loss it was not a hard book to read. Quite the opposite. I could hardly wait to finish it, because I wanted to know what happens to all the characters and how the story ends. The writer with the beautiful name did not dissapoint. :) This was a very well rounded novel. The ending was just "like the point on top of the letter i" as the saying goes in my native Finnish, meaning it was pretty perfect. :)

¨¨¨¨¨¨*****¨¨¨¨¨¨*****¨¨¨¨¨¨¨*****¨¨¨¨¨¨

I've been reading some new Finnish literature lately. A few days ago I finished a funny, little book about an 80-something old man who complained about nearly everything. Every chapter started with ""Well, it really hurt my feelings, when..." One of the best one's was when he really hurt his feelings when the sun was shining! :) The book is an absolute gem! We celebrated Father's Day here yesterday and I bought the book as a gift for my Dad. It will be interesting to hear what he thinks about the book.

Now I'm reading another interesting Finnish novel. It tells about a young woman who converts to the Hare Krishna religion. It is said to be a poetical story about the difficulties of trying to remember the childhood before the religious convertion and the pain and joy of becoming an adult, finding one's sexual identity and the right to feel pleasure. I'm really enjoying this novel, too. I guess I might soon have to change my mind about Finnish literature being mostly -dare I say this- boring. :) (I do think that all too many Finnish novels tend to move on very dark waters: depression, alcohol problems, abuse etc. and that kind of books don't usually interest me. No and Me talks about depression and abuse, but the book itself is not depressing or dark at all.)

I'm not sure if I'll have time for another post this week. We'll see. I'll be in Vienna next weekend, so maybe I'll have some nice pictures to share with you after that. Happy reading everyone!

The American Girl

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!

More about The American Girl on the Other Press website here.

I will count The American Girl towards my personal FINNishing Up -challenge. I am so lagging behind in this challenge...

Finnish Classics Part 2.

Back in September I wrote a post about some Finnish classics. It was my intention to post part 2 soon after part 1, but then I got too busy preparing for the upcoming Finnish 10-Dance Championships and forgot all about part 2. Well, better late than never! Here comes part 2, and in tune with my participating in the Women Unbound Challenge it is all about women writers! I must say, though, that it's such a pity not more Finnish novels have been translated into English...

1. Three Novels by Aino Kallas

Aino Kallas (1878-1956) belonged to a well-known intellectual family. Her father Julius Krohn was the professor of Finnish literature at the University of Helsinki. Aino published her first work at the age of 19. In 1900 she married Oskar Kallas, an Estonian scientist. The couple lived first in St. Petersburg, Russia (Finland at the time was a Russian Grand Duchy), then in Estonia and later in Great Britain after Oskar Kallas was appointed Estonia's ambassador there. Later still the Nazi-occupation of Estonia forced the Kallas to flee to Sweden. Her last years the widowed Aino Kallas lived in Finland. She wrote both poetry and prose. Three Novels is a collection of her three most famous novels, the most famous being, perhaps, The Wolf's Bride, which is a werewolf story. The other two short novels in the book are Barbara von Tisenhusen and The Pastor of Reigi. All three novels tell about illegitimate love and are also called The Eros Trilogy. Her writing is inventive and beautiful, but I must warn you, there are no happy endings in these stories. The stories were first translated into English between 1927-1930 and then again 1975.

Read more about Aino Kallas and her work here.

2. The Moomin books by Tove Jansson. These are children's book classics (but even adults read them:)) made really popular all again in the 1990s, because of a Japanese cartoon based on the moomin characters. Tove Jansson (1914-2001), belonged to Finland's Swedish-speaking minority. Both her parents were artists, and all the children in the family chose artistic professions. Tove became an artist, an illustrator, and a writer. Her life partner was graphic designer Tuulikki Pietilä. The Moomin books, first of which, The Moomins and the Great Flood, was published in 1945, tell about the lovable moomin trolls (who look a bit like white hippos :)) and their friends in the Moominvalley.

Quite a few of Jansson's novels & short stories aimed for an adult audience, are also available in English. Sort of Books publishing house in London have during the 2000s published 5 of her books (Sun City, The Summer Book, A Winter Book, Fair Play, and The True Deceiver). Read more about Tove Jansson here.

3. The Collected Poems by Edith Södergran.

Edith Södergran (1892-1923) was another Swedish-speaking Finn and is now considered one of the internationally best known Finnish poets. Her first collection was published in 1916 and she managed to write five more books of poetry before succumbing to consumption. One more collection was published posthumously in1925. She was an early modernist, who gained more recognition only many years after her death. Read more about her here.

4. Not Before Sundown/Troll -A Love Story by Johanna Sinisalo

Johanna Sinisalo (b. 1958) won the Finlandia Prize with her first novel Ennen päivänlaskua ei voi in 2000. Before that she had already established herself as a science fiction and fantasy short story writer. Her novel was translated into English as Not Before Sundown in 2003, and for the American market as Troll -A Love Story in 2004. This is a brilliant, innovative novel with fantastical elements drawn from Finnish folklore. The book is, in my opinion, a true modern classic. Sinisalo has written four books since The Troll, unfortunately they are not available in English. Read a bit more about Sinisalo here.

Happy Epiphany for those who celebrate!

Chapter 21: Finnish Classics, Part 1

All countries have their own literary classics. I thought that some of you might be interested in getting a list of some Finnish literary classics. I mean, especially those classics that have been translated into English. ;) So, here goes:

1. Kalevala
For us Finns this is the classic of all classics. Kalevala is the Finnish national epic. The Greek have their Iliad and Odyssey, the French have their Song of Roland, us Finns have our Kalevala. It is an epic poem compiled by Elias Lönnrot. He, a doctor and a scolar, made, starting in the 1820s, several trips to Eastern parts of Finland and to Karelia to collect folk poetry which he then compiled into a book. The first version of Kalevala was published in the 1830s. In 1849 a wider collection of 50 poems was published. The 1849 version is the one that is the standard Kalevala today. Wikipedia article about Kalevala has a nice synopsis of the plot & also information about the main characters. Also, the Project Gutenberg site has both the oldest (1888) and the second oldest (1907) (part 1/2 only) full text English translations available on-line for free.

2. Seven Brothers by Aleksis Kivi
This is the first important Finnish language novel. It was first published in 1870. Seven Brothers has been translated into English several times. The first English translation was published in 1929, the latest, by Richard A. Impola, was publsihed in New York in 1991. Aleksis Kivi is considered our national writer. He wrote the novel at a time when literary Finnish was still being developed. Seven Brothers tells the story of, well, seven, rather stubborn, brothers, who come into conflict with their local village community.

3. The Unknown Soldier by Väinö Linna
Linna's first major novel (first published in Finnish in 1954) is a story set in the 1940s. It is a story about the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union told from the viewpoint of a group of ordinary soldiers. As far as I've heard the English translation is unfortunately not very faithful to the original Finnish text.

4. Under the North Star by Väinö Linna
This is a trilogy that follows the life of a family and while doing so tells us about the big picture, the important historical events of the time. The story begins during the Russian rule in Finland, moves through the Finnish Civil War to the years of World War II and beyond. The opening words of the first part of the trilogy (In English"In the beginning there were the marsh, the hoe - and Jussi") is a line that even those Finns that have never read the book recognise. Again, if you want to learn more about the plot and characters, here is an article you might find interesting. Under the North Star was translated by Richard Impola in the beginning of the 2000s.

5. The Egyptian by Mika Waltari
Mika Waltari was perhaps the greatest writer of historical fiction we have ever had in Finland, though he also wrote many contemporary novels. Many of his books have been translated into English. His most celebrated book is The Egyptian (first published in Finnish in 1945). Set in Ancient Egypt, mostly in the reign of pharaoh Akhenaten, The Egyptian tells the story of the royal physician Sinuhe. This is one of my all time favorite novels. In the picture above the book on the left is my own copy of the 1951 Finnish 7th edition (=Sinuhe egyptiläinen) that I got from my grandmother when I was maybe 14 or 15.

It is well past my bedtime now & I still want to read at least a few pages of Summer Will Show before sleep, so I better continue later. Stay tuned for part 2.