Hello Gentle Reader
For a while now I have been pushing Sofi Okansen to the side. The marketing of the English translation for her novel “Purge,” has been compared to that of Stieg Larsson, in that it is a Nordic crime novel. If one looks at the author Sofi Okansen, they would think she would be an author who would fit right into the crime genre. With her dark lipstick, black hair, mixed with dreads, and at times fetishistic dress – Sofi Okansen’s comparison to a rock star is not made lightly – at the same time one can understand how English language publishers may see her as crime writer. Though as Okansen has pointed out in an interview:
“I'm not a genre writer. The explosion of crime writing in Scandinavia is an interesting phenomenon, but I have to say that most of the popular Scandinavian crime authors are not Finnish. They are mostly Swedish.”
This is very true. Sofi Okansen’s writing is very socially aware, and politically intrigued; but it also (in the case of “Purge,”) historically set. Can genre writers – in this case, crime writers – do all that? Yes; yes they can – but what is separating, Sofi Okansen from crime writers, and crime writing; is that a crime writers main focus is on solving the crime or around the action around the crime. The focus is the crime. Crime fiction can be set historically. It can deal with social issues and political problems; but it is always set around the context of the crime. In Ms. Okansen’s case, the crimes that are committed within this novel are not the base of the book. The crimes committed, are merely reactionary. Reactionary to the fall of the Soviet Union – and other socialists satellite states; as well as reactionary the small and personal circumstances that impede on one’s life. In these regards Sofi Okansen is not a crime writer. In these regards, I was struck by how a lot of the action can come across as mundane, and normal, but how quick everything changes. There’s a real sense that one does not truly comprehend the historical action that is surrounding the novel. There are no large invasions. German and Soviet troops march in, and make themselves comfortable. Yet daily life goes on as usual. Canning needs to be done. Jams and preserves are made. Bread is baking in the oven.
These scenes and mundane actions, which happened within the kitchen of the home of: Aliide and Ingel; reminded me of some of my most, fondest moments of childhood. Autumn is my favourite season. The cool nights and crisp mornings. The clearness of the air. The sky seems higher, the far flung distances, become more acute, as the haze of summer dissipates. I find autumn and winter to be the most celebratory seasons in western culture. There is the celebration of the harvest. Bonfires alight. Beer is shared. Pumpkins are carved. Stories and memories are relived. Tricks and treats go hand in hand. One of my favourite memories though was the picking of the garden. All spring and summer long my/our mother (if we weren’t quick – my siblings and I) had us help her pick weeds and tending to her garden. If one was unfortunate enough, they would be out there helping pick and pull. Yet in those moments and time spent out there – as much as we hated it; we began to understand the difference between a weed and a ‘plant.’ As gardeners say: “not all flowers are friendly.” We learned what sow thistle was; and how much it hurt. How it scraped our little ankles and our calves. Yet there were ambiguous weeds as well. Baldr’s Brow (also known as scentless chamomile) we thought they were daisies, and tenderly loved them. There were toadflaxes; which resembled snapdragons. Those herbal dragons, of foliage and petals. We used to imagine that their leaves and petals unfolded. Revealing themselves as a small reptilian dragon; who had grown accustom to drinking nectar and pollen in nocturnal surroundings. Then there were creeping bellflowers. Those beautiful drooping bells of purple. Such a beauty to behold. Yet apparently we learned these purple beauties were aggressive, invaders. Yet how could something so beautiful be a weed? It did have a crown of rotten lion’s teeth like the dandelion. Yet still it was something to be picked and pulled. Some weeds though, had use. Like dill weed. Clover as well; though it was never used when I was younger, it was mulched up and cut up on the lawn. Yet it was autumn that was the best time of the year. Every night we would have to go out and cover the tomatoes with old blankets. The blankets protected the tomatoes from the early frost. By early October or mid to late September, long after the other vegetables had been dug out and harvested, the tomatoes needed to be picked. We would do our best to put off harvesting them to soon, to make sure they got a good size. But as the threat of a premature snow, became more apparent, we would have to deal with what we had on the vines. Large and small; green and yellow and red as well as orange; were all picked and put in the cardboard boxes. The acid scent of the tomatoes mixed with the aged and dusty smell of the box, with the sweet scent of fading summer earth. The other vegetables had already been salvaged. They too were ripening in the basement. Some had already been canned. So began the canning season. It was my favourite part of autumn. I remember the cooling days and the overcast sky. My mother began canning. The smell of vinegar and salt becomes a lingering scent in the house. The kitchen window fogs up. Carrots are pickled. Cucumbers are pickled. Yet with cucumbers the strangest metamorphosis happens. A cucumber is like a vegetable butterfly. Where it was a crisp cucumber, it becomes a soft salty pickle. A pickled carrot remains a carrot. A cucumber does not remain the same. Mother also canned more than just vegetables. People would drop by with fruit from other places. We ate what we could. The rest were canned. There were cans of cherries and peaches, preserved. One year my mother dried apricots. Yet it is the canning of the vegetables that I remember more closely then everything else. The green beans, the homemade salsa, the pickled beets. They lined the cupboards and the shelves. It’s a fond memory. This is why reading the canning that Aliide and Ingel do, is something that I fondly remember of this book.
There are a few reasons why I had wanted to Sofi Okansen. I wanted to a read a Finnish author’s book. The country and their literature is grotesquely overlooked. The Finnish authors that I could find: Rosa Liksom “Dark Paradise,” a series of short stories; Anita Konkka “A Fool’s Paradise,” a novel – Anita Konkka has also written a short story for the anthology “The Best European Fiction,” in two thousand and eleven. Both Rosa and Anita Konkka’s sole fiction, was out of stock, everywhere I could think of looking. Yet other than these two authors, Finland was seriously lacking any representation from the English language. Then there was Sofi Okansen. A Finnish author, who has written about Communist Estonia. With that in mind, I could now also read about Estonia. Yet still reading a book by an Estonian author is also on my list of books, from countries I want to read from. In these regards though Sofi Okansen would, allow me in a sense to kill two birds with one stone; if only on the most superficial levels.
Sofi Okansen is a well revered novelist and playwright. “Purge,” initially started out as a play. Okansen has been the first woman to win both of the prestigious literary prizes of Finland: the “Finlandia,” and the “Runeberg.” Yet Sofi Okansen’s success did not stop there with her novel “Purge,” it also went on to win the Nordic Council Prize for Literature in two-thousand and ten, being the first Finnish woman to do so; as well, I believe; as being the youngest author to win the prize. Most recently Sofi Okansen has won the Swedish Academy Nordic Prize in two-thousand and thirteen. She is the first Finnish woman to achieve that accolade again.
Upon beginning “Purge,” I wasn’t sure what I would be greeted with. The title itself comes from the Stalinist eras, purge of residents from the socialists satellite states; being forced into labour camps. The most famous testimonials of this have been published as “The Gulag Archipelago,” by Nobel Laureate in Literature Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. More contemporary novels and works that deal with this is fellow Laureate Herta Müller’s most recent novel “The Hunger Angel.” “Purge,” can now be considered an equal testament – though the Gulags and the forced labour camps of Stalin’s regime are not dealt with directly, like the other two novels. “Purge,” deals more with betrayal, family secrets, the moral and ethical collapse that has swept through Eastern Europe since the fall of the Iron Curtain, and the hushed secrets that are still no quite spoken yet within the former Iron Curtain and Soviet Union.
The Novel, concerns the lives of two women. Aliide Truu, and Zara. That being said the novels main focus is on Aliide Truu – as the novel runs its course through sixty years. Sofi Okansen had begun writing the play, with an older woman as a main character in mind. Simply because older woman, and older characters in general; do not always get large parts. Aliide in the present time: is a woman who lives in a small village. Surviving by growing vegetables, and canning. She has practical knowledge of herbs. This archaic knowledge is how she has survived through the years. For as Aliide points out:
“[. . . ] they might as well all come – Mafia thugs, soldiers – Reds and Whites – Russians, Germans, Estonians . . . Aliide would survive. She always had.”
The price of this survival though is a deep subject of the novel. Secrets are a tool of the trade in survival; especially under a tyrannical regime. Yet this survival has a deep price. Betrayal between family members happened with heavy hearted consent. The sibling rivalry between, Ingel and Aliide have always been hinted at. Ingel was the dutiful prodigious house wife and daughter. She knew how to make jams, she knew how to make marigold salve, preserve the year’s harvest, she knew how to milk the cow, make and hem clothes, and repair. She knew how to do it all – and do it better than Aliide. Aliide would forever be in the shadow of her sister. It is when Ingel marries; Aliide’s secret desire and love; Hans Pekk – that there is a feeling that the last nail has been nailed into the coffin. It is Hans Pekk that puts both Ingel and Aliide into danger. Both women are constantly harassed by the secret police, because of Hans’s affiliation and assistance with the German ‘liberators.’ Both women suffer greatly, at the shame and the humiliation:
“The only thing left alive was the shame.”
Yet the greatest betrayal is when Aliide converts to the communist cause of Estonia, and marries a party member. This act of survival becomes the greatest act of betrayal between the two. Yet in the present day Aliide suffers for this past ‘betrayal,’ of her home country. As another former communist laments:
“We were all just following orders. We were good people. And now all of a sudden we're bad.”
This is why Aliide is harassed by the neighbourhood boys; who cowardly throw rocks at her house; and vandalise it. Yet for Aliide – she would always survive. She had survived through communism; interrogations, espionage, betrayal and the deceptions she herself handed out. Then in the present enters the catalyst Zara. The young woman, who in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the socialist satellite states; began to understand the possibilities of a better life and of more money,. Yet with the opening up of Eastern Europe, and democracy welcomed in with shaky and open arms – the fall in its place, opened up a cascade of corruption to flow into newer areas. Zara is a victim of this new and corrupted world. With Zara Sofi Okansen turns her eye towards social issues, and problems that are affecting the world today, especially former Soviet States, where those in power, quickly grabbed money and possessions, and others went in questionable dealings.
The novel brings to mind if people can be judged and even found guilty upon their actions they do, based upon the fact that, they themselves are just: following orders. Yet for Aliide who had been tormented by the communists in the beginning, had found escape with a party official.
With a subdued and laconic tone, that hums and vibrates with tension Sofi Okansen has created a novel that is taut with tension. Shame and secrets, prevail in this novel. We lock up our pasts. Burry them in the garden. We are tormented for them. We can our aggression and our hatred into the fruits and vegetables. We hide our shame in secrets rooms, and within attics. All of this is presented in this novel. The only flaw really is the ending. It felt too quick – too rushed. Yet every author seems to make that mistake in some way or another; at some time or another. Yet Okansen has created a very desperate and grey world. A world that is beyond repair; new dictatorships have risen. Lucrative and illegal businesses are abound. The former Soviet Union is still young. It has picked itself up in some cases. Others continue to struggle. Some are just coming to terms with the horrors of the past. Understanding that no one could be trusted. Realizing that parents watched each other; spied on their children; children spied on their parents, their friends. Teachers constantly monitored their students. Students reported the activities of their teachers. It was a world lead by fear and paranoia. In this novel Sofi Okansen makes it apparent. There is also a clear cycle of retribution that continually, circles around and around. Those who were exiled come back and take back their homes. Those who were the communists find themselves truly a lone; meek and powerless. While a generation finds itself lost in a shifting and changing world, answering for their parents crimes.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
*And Remember: Downloading Books Illegally is Thievery and Wrong.*
M. Mary
