The Thick of the Forest by Turku-based author Linnea Kuuluvainen, one of the strongest debuts of this year, has been off to a great start and has collected a glowing review on Helsingin Sanomat, the largest national newspaper.
Arla Kanerva, the reviewer on Helsingin Sanomat newspaper has commented as follows:
“Mankind destroys, and therefore mankind is destroyed. Linnea Kuuluvainen’s (b.1996) The Thick of the Forest brings a refreshing twist on a dystopia told many times over. […] the forest is a creature of its own, whose furious attack on Turku at the beginning of the book delights with the force of its cinematic perspective. The reasons for the rage of the forest are clear, and the author doesn’t attempt to iron out the centuries of man’s destructive actions. The Thick of the Forest does not preach, but rather researches the relationship between mankind and nature. There is also a delightful playfulness and the author’s joy in creating the world. The whirlwind of the author’s imagination shows the power of storytelling.“
The Thick of the Forest is set in a near future, nature has started fighting back against humanity, destroying the world as we know it. To escape nature’s vengeance and isolate themselves from it as well as they can, people have fled to small city-states surrounded by walls. One of them is the former city of Turku, where a tightly guarded Nation has been established. Ingrid grew up in this new world, and has lived all her life in the Nation. After her mother’s death, she gets a job with a research group called Wild Rosemary, whose task is to map the conditions outside the walls of the Nation. Although the forest has been pacified, it is still angry and dangerous, and soon there is discord among the researchers as well.
The Thick of the Forest is an entrancing and linguistically captivating first novel about a forest that haunts people and two women, Edla and Ingrid, whose stories intersect. The result is a rich telling of the relationship between mankind and nature, and of how the lines dividing them become increasingly blurry in the depth of the forest. The book is published by Gummerus.
Congratulations to the author and the publisher, and way to go!