Say so long to Canadian Gothic, and hello to Finnish Weird
The Core of the Sun Johanna Sinisalo Grove Press 304 pp; $23
It’s a strange world out there and apparently no portion of it is so odd as that outlier of Scandinavia known as Finland. A variant of global culture known as “Finnish Weird” has apparently emerged in that country, including such activities as World Cell Phone Throwing Championships, Air Guitar World Championships and so on. I’m getting this information from the Internet so somebody may be pulling our collective legs, but it is indubitable that Finnish writer Johanna Sinisalo exists and creates her own literary version of Finnish Weird with novels such as her latest, The Core of the Sun.
This novel takes place in contemporary Finland — not a future Finland but a Finland existing in a parallel universe, so that the characters are not robots but traditional types such as farmers, drug dealers, government bureaucrats and so on. They drive cars and read books — including romance novels — and use surveillance cameras, but have no cellphones or computers or television to speak of.
They seem to have recently overcome a nationwide drug problem, consisting of the trade in illicit jalapeno peppers and other outlawed chilis, which are too hot for the Finnish nervous system to handle. These peppers disrupt the social system, aimed at turning out docile young women known as elois ( not exactly the same as the creatures depicted by H. G. Wells). The purpose of the Finnish eloi is to attract men and get them to propose marriage and sire children — these females make The Stepford Wives look like Germaine Greer in a cranky mood.
The protagonist is a young woman named Vanna who is pretty enough and dexterous enough to pose as an eloi — all she has to do is speak in a “submissive simper” and with a “flirty chirpiness” — but really she is smart enough to possess the soul of a morlock ( another H.G. Wells term), that is to say, a woman capable of functioning in the world of mascos, or normal males. This is dangerous business. She may be caught and convicted of “gender fraud” for doing her eloi act. She is also a chili addict, which may be her downfall, since she needs the stuff to cope with severe emotional difficulties. Those difficulties are symbolized by a vault in her psyche, called the Cellar. When trauma strikes, black, cold water pours into the Cellar, threatening psychologically to drown the poor woman. A chili pepper in time may avert this fate. That, and sex, which she discovers late in the novel. With the fervour of a last minute convert, Vanna proclaims, “It’s such a central part of adult life that going without it could be considered a violation of human rights.”
The keenest source of emotional diffic ulty f or Vanna is the disappearance of her younger sister, a true eloi. Was she murdered by her husband, a masco of the most unregenerate sort?
The novel is partly in the form of a mystery then, although not a very satisfactory one. More interesting is the alternate universe aspect, the fictional world fabricated by flimsy and warped two- by- f ours of psychology and sociology. Finland strikes me as an odd locale for this dystopia — the real Finland doesn’t seem to me to be a nightmare of sexual stereotyping and male chauvinism. Of course the author is Finnish and doubtless knows her Finnish Weird more than we do. When she calls her fictional Finland a “usistocracy,” or the reign of health — meaning a totalitarian society based on a strict regimen of social and physical well being — she may suspect that a tendency toward eusistocracy indeed lurks in the Finnish soul.
It’s fun to think of a div-
‘A BOOK OR A DOCUMENTARY OR A PODCAST IS NOW SEEN AS THE CONTINUATION, EVEN THE BEGINNING, OF A CRIME STORY, NOT THE END. THE DICHOTOMY OF TRUE CRIME IS NOW BETWEEN OBSERVER AND PARTICIPANT.’ — SARAH WEINMAN, EDITOR OF ‘WOMEN CRIME WRITERS’ THE REAL FINLAND DOESN’T SEEM TO BE A NIGHTMARE OF SEXUAL STEREOTYPING
ision between eusistocratic countries and countries the narrator calls “decadent democracies” or “hedonistic countries.” A country such as Greece surely belongs to the latter, while Albania, when it was run by Stalinists, surely belongs to the former.
In the end Sinisalo, with her introduction of a religious cult, aims for a larger philosophical target, carried on the wings of mysticism and fostered by the ultimate chili pepper. I was glad the novel approached its end with this revelation and I didn’t have to read much more about it. The newly introduced theme did provide the novel with a plausible means of ending the narrative, but generally I prefer Air Guitar World Championships to oneness with nature.
It may be t hat mysticism also tends to promote overwrought prose. Here is Vanna, describing how she removes some of the more potent chili peppers from her mouth: “I try to move my tongue inside my mouth and every movement releases a school of microscopic piranhas that bite the membranes of my mouth with greedy, needle- sharp teeth, f ollowed by t i ny atomic explosions that scorch my j aws until they f eel l i ke they’re about to be burned to a crisp and crumble down my front.”
Finally the author is left with the problem all future fiction and parallel universe creators must face, namely that their worlds are of necessity less interesting than the worlds we actually live in and know so well.