Safe Return Doubtful

(translated from the Finnish by Lola Rogers)

Isn’t it good when the book you pick up at 8 in the morning on New Year’s Day will figure as one of the best of the year..

Elina Ylijaako must return to her hometown in a remote part of northwestern Finland each year to catch a pike from a particular pond, or else something particularly unpleasant will happen. Unfortunately on this occasion, she fails on her first attempt and from there, things get increasingly complex.
On her tail is a police detective, Janatuinen, who sees her as a murder suspect back in the city.

I must confess that two things immediately appeal to me about this novel, its location, which is one I spent some time in last year, and that the plot unfurls around the folklore of the area, and in the Arctic and Sami culture, myth and legend play a big part.

To say that Elina’s hometown is populated by a quirky crowd, would be an understatement. Partner them with that murder investigation, a deadly curse, and a splendid set of mythical creatures and a better picture is building of this outstanding novel.
The blend is the key though, and Karila gets it just right. Instead a folk-horror approach there is a vibrant, zestful feel to the story, with a good amount of humour.

Within the cities of the Finnish south there is a stereotypical view of people from the far north, that they are involved in witchcraft, and believe in all sorts of mythical creatures. Karila plays to this. It’s a debut novel for her, and she may be pleasantly surprised about its international success.

It’s difficult to compare it to anything I’ve read, but there are shades of the Estonian love of folklore, written about by Andrey Kivirähk, and adapated to the film, November.

It seems to have gone under the radar a bit, since its release by Pushkin in July. It deserves a better reception in the media than it has received at present. Note that in the US, it is released by Restless Books, and has the title, Fishing For Little Pike, not as good a title I think..

Karila emerges as another talent from the Finnish north, and there are some great modern writers amidst that sparse population.. Rosa Liksom Compartment No. 6 and The Colonel’s Wife, and Arto Paasilinna The Year of the Hare and The Howling Miller.

Here’s a clip..

Slabber Olli told her about the places he had been. He had been to the bottom of the sea and wandered endless gardens of stars in outer space. He said that human time as we know it was over. That the waters would rise and then fall, and then fiery waters would come. The Earth would be reshaped into something new. Mud would flow. Boiling canyons would open up. “The mountains are already starting to move,” Slabber Olli said. He told her about creatures that used to live in the sea, like reptiles with two mouths, a horizontal one and a vertical one. He told her about creatures at the bottom of the sea shaped like elm leaves, with five eyes and long, bendy elephant trunks and scissors on their heads. About sharks with anvils growing on their backs. Flightless birds three meters tall that ran after deer on graceful, muscular legs that bent and stretched, bent and stretched, their beaks opened wide. He told her about the rockets people would build to shoot themselves off to other planets, and how badly it would turn out. Humans would continue their journey. They would find doors to knock on and portals that wouldn’t open when they knocked, and the humans would break them down, and the ones they couldn’t break they would build keys for. And all the while, humans would be changing. Humans would be changed not just by time but by humans themselves, and before long you’d have to call them human derivatives, and then something else entirely. In the end, it was just matter rearranging itself over and over. What was the Earth? Nothing more than an entrance hall where humanity had once briefly waited. Slabber Olli talked about a lot of other things, too, and Elina listened and understood that the part of Slabber Olli that was still human wanted to wander and search for knowledge, just like anyone else. The evening advanced, the light softened. At some point, Slabber Olli disappeared. Elina went back to the boat.

My GoodReads score 5 / 5