{"id":2205,"date":"2012-08-07T00:00:04","date_gmt":"2012-08-07T00:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=2205"},"modified":"2012-10-27T06:45:18","modified_gmt":"2012-10-27T06:45:18","slug":"the-human-part-by-kari-hotakainen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=2205","title":{"rendered":"The Human Part by Kari Hotakainen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by MacLeHose Press Quercus 2 August 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

224pp, hardback, \u00a314.99\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Catherine Jones<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nobody is happy. Nobody has a voice. Set in the grim landscape of Finland\u2019s economic downturn, here\u2019s a tirade against modern-day spin and where it\u2019s got us \u2013 graduates in welfare queues, intimidating youths in city parks, and Salme Malmikunnas\u2019s three adult children in various stages of quiet despair. (Her fourth child died young after cycling into a well.)<\/p>\n

Elderly narrator Salme, who made a living from a traditional yarn and button business, mainly communicates with her children through epigrams on the back of postcards, and her husband doesn\u2019t speak at all \u2013 a man with a temper but mute since an undisclosed family tragedy.<\/p>\n

When an author in need of a story offers money to Salme, she starts talking and doesn\u2019t stop.\u00a0 \u2018The author\u2019 wants to make fiction of her truth – for contradiction, as one character ponders, is \u2018salt\u2019 and \u2018without contradiction, life has no flavours\u2019 – and in any event, Salme needs the money for another undisclosed reason.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the lives of her children \u2013 products of a society rife with transient \u2018operations management\u2019 jobs – are woven through her own observations on the bitter joys of motherhood, delivered with the terse emotion of a generation no longer daring to consider itself the backbone of the nation.<\/p>\n

Salme is apparently unaware one of her children finds meals by loitering in the food halls of department stores to load up on freebie tidbits, another is on the verge of a breakdown (or self discovery), and a third takes to shoplifting a meat pie and a hoodie.<\/p>\n

\u2018Do you like to resist change?\u2019 her eldest, Helena, is asked in the office.<\/p>\n

\u2018I like to resist stupidity,\u2019 Helena replies, fed up to the gills with meetings, committees and \u2018memoranda strategy working groups\u2019.<\/p>\n

A range of disenfranchized characters act as vehicles to take a pop at aspects of contemporary life \u2013 the man who started life as \u2018a no-one, with nothing, from nowhere\u2019 obsessing over his Audi, the public outpouring of grief in response to the death of Princess Diana, and the everyday worship of celebrity.<\/p>\n

\u2018How could they say they loved people they didn\u2019t know, who spoke, sang, danced, played sports and wrote well!\u2019 asks Salme\u2019s daughter, Maija, of her peers.\u00a0 \u2018The people on television and in the magazines\u2026they jumped, slimy, from magazine to magazine croaking the same thing, their eyes wet with their own excellence\u2019.<\/p>\n

Might this novel be a cry for forgotten virtues \u2013 the likes of kindness, imagination and creativity \u2013 in a money-mad, status-obsessed world, all of it drawn together in something resembling the crazily-doodled metropolis on the book\u2019s cover?<\/p>\n

\u2018Take time for yourself,\u2019 says a sign in the window of a chemist. The author appears to be offering a wry entreaty to find peace in the mayhem, and the wherewithal to know oneself – even if you have to find your way there in a car with Clint Eastwood\u2019s voice on the G.P.S..<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Catherine Jones<\/p>\n

\u2018Do you like to resist change?\u2019 Helena, is asked in the office.<\/p>\n

\u2018I like to resist stupidity,\u2019 Helena replies, fed up to the gills with meetings, committees and \u2018memoranda strategy working groups\u2019.<\/p>\n

[…] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2205"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3012,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2205\/revisions\/3012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}