‘Sadeiassa jokin sai
hänet varpailleen, jokin sai hänet toivomaan, että hän voisi koskettaa tämän
hameenhelmaa, edes vain helmaa, kuin kangas olisi osa Sadeiaa, ja Tirilaiaa
raivostutti, häntä raivostutti nyt, hän ei ollut samanlainen kuin kaikki ne
typerät lampaat, jotka sokeina aukoivat suutaan odottaen Sadeialta herkkuja,
vai oliko hän juuri sellainen, hän ja valkosuklaakanit, hän ei tosiaan voinut
vastustaa niitä, hän oli kaikkien muiden yläpuolella, hän oli Sadeian
alapuolella, hän olisi musteenmusta prinsessa!’
‘Something about
Sadeia got her on her toes, something made her wish that she could touch the
hem of her skirt, even just the hem, as if the fabric were a part of Sadeia,
and it made Tirilaia angry, she was angry now, she wasn’t like all those stupid
sheep that blindly opened their mouths waiting for Sadeia to give them treats, or
was she just like that, she and the white chocolate bunnies, she really
couldn’t resist them, she was above everyone else, she was beneath Sadeia, she
would be the ink-black princess!’
This is a book I have so much to say about and no idea where
to start. Surunhauras, lasinterävä (literally
‘Fragile as sadness, sharp as glass’,
though the English translation offered by Bonnier is ‘The Sorrow-deer Tamer’) is Siiri Enoranta’s sixth novel, and
continues with the familiar recipe: long, stream of consciousness –type
sentences, strange names, a desperate dystopian world and deep, passionate
romance. These are also the reasons why Enoranta’s previous novel, Nokkosvallankumous, is at the top of my
favourite books of all time, so I’m far from complaining. And I really liked
this novel as well… at first, anyway.
Surunhauras,
lasinterävä is a story of the Sorrow-deer islands, where every six-year old
is told by the sorrow-deer how much sadness they’ll have to endure in their
life, and the Sidrineia kingdom, deeply matriarchal and led by a sixteen-year
old tyrant. The story has over a dozen characters through whose eyes the
intricate plot is told, hopping from place and time to another and recapping
the same events from different minds, different principles and morals.
There are definitely good things about the book, and I’ll
lead with those because I really wanted to like the story more than I did. I
liked Sadeia and Kurkuma’s characters a lot at the beginning, but as the story
processed, I came to like Tirilaia more than anyone else. She had her twisted
admiration for the young tyrant and her childlike tendencies that made me
believe she could really be a ten-year old girl who had been dealt the worst
possible hand in life. Her story also didn’t get a quick fix ex machina like most
of the other characters’ did, and she continued to have her own, strong voice
the whole way through.
The style of the book is flowing but very heavy, the
sentences drawling and reaching on and on in the most beautiful ways – if
that’s your thing. There’s also something very deeply ingrained and Finnish
about Enoranta’s word choices that made me feel like I was reading an old epic
that took place in the future, faithful to my home country but set somewhere
very far. She has an exceptional grasp on the language as well as a creative
mind to put it into use, to the point where the novel’s flimsy plot didn’t
prevent me from enjoying the work.
The characters are very different, at least in theory, but
the more I read, the more I felt like most of them were blending together,
similar voices and thoughts and all-around losing their characteristics in the
mess that the book became after the two worlds collided. Some of the characters
didn’t get much of a personality at all, and I think it would have been better
to leave some of them out and focus on developing the relationships and
characters that really mattered.
Speaking of relationships, I think Surunhauras, lasinterävä really suffers from its portrayal of
teenage instalove. The novel wanted me to care about two separate romances that
started too quick, developed too frantically and were too physical to really
relate to, not to mention how these people just very conventionally found each
other and fell in love in a heartbeat. I was also meant to care when one of
these romances was brought to a bitter end, with the other character going as
far as remarking that they’ll never love
again. Sure, true love is a thing but here they hardly had enough time to
even get past the pathetic crush -phase.
One more thing that might seem irrelevant but made the world
of a difference to me: I really liked the last sentence of the book. It was out
of nowhere and sudden, but it was hopeful and just so cute. I read it to my mum and she thought it was so cute that she
actually started crying. That was definitely a great ending for the book.
All in all, I’d like to give the book 3,5 stars out of 5,
because it was good, even though it just didn’t do it for me. I’ll round that
down just because I liked Nokkosvallankumous
so much more, but I’ll forever be looking forward to Siiri Enoranta’s new works
(and read the previous ones when I’m in the country/run into them), because her
talent is undeniable and her novels are always interesting, miserable and a
pleasure to read. I hope one day her works will be translated into other languages as well, because I've spent so much time rambling about them to non-Finnish friends and because I'd love to see more Finnish quality YA novels out there in the world.
(PS. I promise I’ll start going to Starbucks less… or maybe
not. Sorry not sorry! I’ll take a picture somewhere else next time though
(maybe))
