A sentimental tale saved from pure nostalgia by the unfamiliarity of its setting and a nicely understated narration.
Niemi’s debut (“the single bestselling book in Sweden’s history,” we’re told) describes life in a remote northern Swedish village during the 1960s.
If Vittula were in the US, it would probably be someplace in Alaska, Arkansas, or Idaho—somewhere very far off the beaten track. A little town north of the Arctic Circle, Vittula is close to the border of Finland, and most of the townspeople are as likely to speak Finnish as Swedish. There’s not much work there outside the timber industry, and with the advent of mechanization most of the lumberjacks are chronically unemployed. Narrator Matti grew up in Vittula in the 1960s and saw the area decline. The fathers all went on the dole, the children moved away or went on the dole themselves, and the rest of Sweden forgot—if it ever knew in the first place—that Vittula existed. Matti tells his story in a series of episodic chapters that come together in a narrative mosaic portraying a time and place long since past. One Sunday the villagers flock to church en masse—even the Communists crowd in—to see an African missionary, the first black man ever to set foot in Vittula. A German tourist who rents a summer cottage in town turns out to be an old SS officer. The new music teacher at school has no fingers on his right hand. Matti’s father explains the facts of life to him in the sauna and tells the boy a bit more about his grandfather’s exploits than he might have wanted to hear. The teenagers from the region gather in an abandoned sewage plant for a drinking contest. And Matti, having long worshipped from afar a mysterious girl in a black Volvo, finally meets and is seduced by his dream woman—without ever learning her name. A portrait of growing up, in other words.
A sentimental tale saved from pure nostalgia by the unfamiliarity of its setting and a nicely understated narration.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2003
ISBN: 1-58322-523-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Seven Stories
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2003
Gloomy indeed. And yet this Arab-Israeli newcomer is never once self-indulgent or sentimental, with the result that his...
A quick, readable, highly engaging—and bluntly pessimistic—debut tale of an Arab-Israeli whose life is one of anger, fear, and broken spirit.
“I was the best student in the class,” announces Kashua’s narrator, “the best in the whole fourth grade.” So it’s possible—isn’t it?—that he’ll go far, escape his family’s drab, broken village, be a great success? He does take the very tough exam for admission to a competitive Israeli school, does pass, does get admitted, and does attend—but not successfully. There’s too much shame for him in a boarding school full of Israeli Jews, shame at simple things like not knowing how to use silverware, what music to listen to, not having the right kind of pants, not pronouncing Hebrew correctly, and shame at bigger things, like the scorn, derision, and threat both in school and on the busses that take back home at the end of the week. Kashua offers nothing new so far—mightn’t this be another tale of schoolboy alienation overcome, true merit being demonstrated, acceptance, comradeship, and success following thereby? No, the conflicts, wounds, and humiliations are too many and too deep. The boy’s grandfather died in the war against Zionism, and even his father was a hero in his own college days, imprisoned on suspicion of complicity in blowing up a school cafeteria. And so, for all his brains, the boy, torn between cultures and histories, begins to fail in school, suffer health problems, lose morale. He never does finish college, but ends up as bartender in a seedy club, despising the Arabs who come in to dance, despising even his own wife, the birth of a baby daughter notwithstanding. Life, at novel’s end, remains seedy, undirected, filled with sorrow, failure, and regret.
Gloomy indeed. And yet this Arab-Israeli newcomer is never once self-indulgent or sentimental, with the result that his story rings out on every page with a compelling sense of human truth.Pub Date: May 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8021-4126-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2004
A knotty portrait of Ojibwe life with some winningly uncanny touches.
A young gay man reckons with love, tribal lore, and a decades-old murder in this rangy debut novel.
Marion, the main narrator of Staples’ first book, isn’t where he wants to be, and that’s back in his hometown on Minnesota’s Ojibwe reservation. A brief stint in the Twin Cities ended with busted relationships, but his best romantic prospect in the area is deeply closeted former high school classmate Shannon, who has the unglorious job of attending to animal carcasses on a resort island. Still, Staples, an Ojibwe writer, wants to suggest that the best way to move forward is by facing one's past head-on. The notion arrives first via symbolism: As children, Marion and his friends spooked each other by saying a dog died under the merry-go-round at the playground, and now that dog reappears (or seems to) in Marion’s presence. That incident sparks Marion’s investigation into his high school days, in particular the murder of Kayden, a basketball star who became a father shortly before he was killed. Plotwise, the story is a stock hero’s-journey tale, as Marion lets go of his skepticism of Ojibwe spiritualism, discovers the truth about Kayden’s death, and finds a community along with a degree of emotional fulfillment. But credit Staples for complicating the story in some interesting ways, from shifting perspectives from Marion to other townspeople (with a particular emphasis on Native women), a smirking humor that cuts the mordant atmosphere (“What do Indians call a lack of faith?” “Being white”), and a graceful handling of Ojibwe culture. In its later stages, the story seems to keep sprouting tentacles as new characters and revelations emerge, which saps some of its narrative drive, but it returns affectingly to the messy fates of Marion and Shannon.
A knotty portrait of Ojibwe life with some winningly uncanny touches.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64009-284-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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