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Et Tema Mäletaks Sedasama (2005)

by Elina Hirvonen(Favorite Author)

3.32 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Kirjastus Varrak

review 1: 3.5 stars. The story is told over one day with flashbacks to the past. Anna is sitting in a cafe while she kills time before reluctantly going to visit her brother Joona, an inpatient in a Psychiatrict Hospital. Anna is a young Finnish woman with an American lover called Ian, who used to be her Professor.With links to the Vietnam war and its horrors through Ian's father and more recent events in history the story links the mental problems in both the families, so both have an understanding of the problems being experienced now and what they've been through in the past. The story is well written and moves along quite nicely, it's quite short at just over a 180 pages so a lot is fit into a short amount of space and as such doesn't waste any narratve at all. A great debut ... morenovel and an Author to look out for again. 7/10.
review 2: I feel sad that I can't remember how this book ended. I had even forgotten I read it until I saw the overdue charge on my library account. After jogging my memory a bit, I recall that I had reasons to appreciate this book. I was curious how much was lost in translation. The protagonist seems very emotionally detached as she shares her story through painful memories. I didn't interpret this as a bad thing, as you often see that in people who survive trauma. There has to be a distance from it or the weight can become unbearable. Anna's brother and even Ian came into much sharper focus for me and were far more memorable. Having adult, mentally ill (and institutionalized) siblings is very tough. You are responsible for them and yet sometimes you want nothing more but to run away from them. You still harbor childhood emotions of fear, confusion, and anger and yet you have no choice but to be the adult in every situation. Your feelings are always secondary to the well-being of your sibling. I thought the author did a good job of conveying this and the emotional toll it takes on a family. less

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