A funny narrative about a happy island’s odd past and odder present.
Author: Mari Mörö
Finnish original: Hajavalo
Publisher: Teos, 2018
Genre: literary fiction
Number of pages: 240 pp.
Reading material: Finnish original, English sample, English synopsis
Malcolm Island, Canada, 1901. A group of idealistic Finnish settlers have decided to realise their dream and set up Sointula, a utopia based on communal ownership and democracy. Troubles soon follow. Communal living doesn’t sit well with everyone, cow shed isn’t completed, a fire’s set ablaze, the community gets into debt and the bridge construction project hits the dust.
Malcolm Island, Canada, 2017. The utopia has crashed and burned over a hundred years ago, but the local Finnish community is still blooming. It’s getting closer to the centenary of the Finnish independence, and a divorced couple is washed out on the island into the thick of the preparations for the party. She is on a mission to refurbish the Finnish museum; he, a failed actor, is on a mission to rock the boat.
A world that has turned unpredictable amidst handsaws, fish traps and mouse-eaten communist flags throws into the mix the remains of a family, community and utopia. What shouldn’t be let go and what should you chuck out at your nearest convenience?
Mari Mörö’s latest novel Partial Shade is a tragicomedy from the island of happy people. Mörö’s masterfully funny and accurate language amuses and touches the reader.
“Mörö’s ability to arrange numerous details to a construction that resembles an approximate whole is amazing. […] Partial Shade is a condensed description of human life, braided together with hundreds of different pieces, with history and present. It widens from singular to universal. It doesn’t push or force but gives permission to just be. It wonders but doesn’t judge. It soothes and perhaps, little by little, tells how you can get somewhere if you stay aimless, and how you can see more in partial shade.” – Keskisuomalainen newspaper
About the author:
Mari Mörö