A detailed, wide-lens historical novel of Finnish Americans then and now.
Munger (Boomtown, 2016, etc.) concludes his Finnish American trilogy with a novel that hops between a modern assassination plot and an early-20th-century immigration experience.
Anders Alhömaki grows up planning to inherit his stepfather’s farm in Finland’s Kainuu region. After a failed relationship with a Kale woman, however, Anders leaves his homeland behind and finds work in Norway’s copper mines. Here he gains a reputation as a boxer, though one whose head is already across the sea: “Aren’t you the one who’s always dreaming of America?” His travels eventually bring him to the mines of Michigan and Minnesota, where many Finns have settled, looking for a better life. Anders is given the opportunity to be his own man—and perhaps to find love in the roiling, immigrant-filled Upper Midwest. Anders’ story is offset by another occurring in 2017. Dr. Janine Tanninen, the daughter of an African-American father and a Finnish American mother from Anders’ Upper Midwest milieu, has married a Finnish man and moved to Finland to assist the resettlement of Syrian refugees. Meanwhile, a disgruntled man plots the assassination of Assistant Director of Immigration for Refugees and Migration Tarja Saariaho. Saariaho, he believes, in her role of resettling Muslim immigrants in Finland, is working to erase the country’s Christian identity. “And now I hear she’s considering a run for fucking president!” he fumes. “That woman has as much right to lead Finland as a drunk sleeping in...downtown Stockholm has to be crowned king of Sweden!” With the roles reversed—Finland an importer rather than an exporter of those looking for a better life—the story of the Alhömakis comes to a startling conclusion. Munger’s prose capably summons the stark landscapes of the novel, which embody both melancholy and understated beauty: “Across the bleak land, a lantern twinkled in a window. He moved quickly; the rhythm of skiing as innate as walking to a young boy of the north.” It’s a sprawling novel, as one would expect from the third volume in a multigenerational immigrant saga, but Munger demonstrates an impressive amount of control as he toggles between the historical (sections 1 and 3) and the contemporary (sections 2 and 4). There is quite a bit of coincidence at work, but perhaps that is par for this genre, which usually seeks to reveal continuities between people and across time. The Anders sections, in particular, manage to evoke the deliberative naturalism of Upton Sinclair and Theodore Dreiser, and Munger effectively maintains this strategy even into the sections set in 2017. His attempts to grapple with current immigration issues, including Syrian refugees in Europe and the election of Donald Trump, make for a complex yet appropriate end to a series that is essentially a long meditation on leaving home and building another life somewhere else. Fans of thoughtful, probing historical fiction should enjoy this final volume, which stands well enough on its own.
A detailed, wide-lens historical novel of Finnish Americans then and now.Pub Date: June 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73244-340-2
Page Count: 363
Publisher: Cloquet River Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Honeyman’s endearing debut is part comic novel, part emotional thriller, and part love story.
A very funny novel about the survivor of a childhood trauma.
At 29, Eleanor Oliphant has built an utterly solitary life that almost works. During the week, she toils in an office—don’t inquire further; in almost eight years no one has—and from Friday to Monday she makes the time go by with pizza and booze. Enlivening this spare existence is a constant inner monologue that is cranky, hilarious, deadpan, and irresistible. Eleanor Oliphant has something to say about everything. Riding the train, she comments on the automated announcements: “I wondered at whom these pearls of wisdom were aimed; some passing extraterrestrial, perhaps, or a yak herder from Ulan Bator who had trekked across the steppes, sailed the North Sea, and found himself on the Glasgow-Edinburgh service with literally no prior experience of mechanized transport to call upon.” Eleanor herself might as well be from Ulan Bator—she’s never had a manicure or a haircut, worn high heels, had anyone visit her apartment, or even had a friend. After a mysterious event in her childhood that left half her face badly scarred, she was raised in foster care, spent her college years in an abusive relationship, and is now, as the title states, perfectly fine. Her extreme social awkwardness has made her the butt of nasty jokes among her colleagues, which don’t seem to bother her much, though one notices she is stockpiling painkillers and becoming increasingly obsessed with an unrealistic crush on a local musician. Eleanor’s life begins to change when Raymond, a goofy guy from the IT department, takes her for a potential friend, not a freak of nature. As if he were luring a feral animal from its hiding place with a bit of cheese, he gradually brings Eleanor out of her shell. Then it turns out that shell was serving a purpose.
Honeyman’s endearing debut is part comic novel, part emotional thriller, and part love story.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2068-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
This novel began as a reworking of W.W. Jacobs' horror classic "The Monkey's Paw"—a short story about the dreadful outcome when a father wishes for his dead son's resurrection. And King's 400-page version reads, in fact, like a monstrously padded short story, moving so slowly that every plot-turn becomes lumberingly predictable. Still, readers with a taste for the morbid and ghoulish will find unlimited dark, mortality-obsessed atmosphere here—as Dr. Louis Creed arrives in Maine with wife Rachel and their two little kids Ellie and Gage, moving into a semi-rural house not far from the "Pet Sematary": a spot in the woods where local kids have been burying their pets for decades. Louis, 35, finds a great new friend/father-figure in elderly neighbor Jud Crandall; he begins work as director of the local university health-services. But Louis is oppressed by thoughts of death—especially after a dying student whispers something about the pet cemetery, then reappears in a dream (but is it a dream) to lead Louis into those woods during the middle of the night. What is the secret of the Pet Sematary? Well, eventually old Jud gives Louis a lecture/tour of the Pet Sematary's "annex"—an old Micmac burying ground where pets have been buried. . .and then reappeared alive! So, when little Ellie's beloved cat Church is run over (while Ellie's visiting grandfolks), Louis and Jud bury it in the annex—resulting in a faintly nasty resurrection: Church reappears, now with a foul smell and a creepy demeanor. But: what would happen if a human corpse were buried there? That's the question when Louis' little son Gage is promptly killed in an accident. Will grieving father Louis dig up his son's body from the normal graveyard and replant it in the Pet Sematary? What about the stories of a previous similar attempt—when dead Timmy Baterman was "transformed into some sort of all-knowing daemon?" Will Gage return to the living—but as "a thing of evil?" He will indeed, spouting obscenities and committing murder. . .before Louis must eliminate this child-demon he has unleashed. Filled out with overdone family melodrama (the feud between Louis and his father-in-law) and repetitious inner monologues: a broody horror tale that's strong on dark, depressing chills, weak on suspense or surprise—and not likely to please the fans of King's zestier, livelier terror-thons.
Pub Date: Nov. 4, 1983
ISBN: 0743412281
Page Count: 420
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1983
BOOK TO SCREEN
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