Popular Music from Vittula Book

[2.5*]

I started this novel because it was recommended on a Russian book podcast that I really enjoy, promising a funny coming of age story set in the middle of nowhere in Sweden, translated beautifully into Russian. I will lie if I say any of this is untrue. It is indeed a coming of age story set in the middle of nowhere in Sweden. It is indeed funny. It is indeed translated astonishingly well into Russian - using simultaneously poetic and crude language (there were quite some words that I don't think I've ever seen written, even somewhere on neglected buildings, and I've seen quite a lot of various words written in such places.) I assume this was how the original text was constructed as well, but I applaud the translator in any case - it doesn't at all read as translated fiction, only the foreign-sounding names are giving away its national origin.

The novel is presented as a collection of vignettes exploring coming of age of a boy and his friends in a place that is both part of the modern world and set apart from it, where drinking is the hobby of most of its male (and often female) inhabitants, where gender roles are stuck in middle ages but where women are nonetheless strong and powerful in their own way, the way they have always been in villages, at least in this part of the world. There is a feeling that the action could have easily been transported to the middle of nowhere in Russia, barely losing a reference. Then there is this sense of the clash of cultures, not just modernity and tradition but also actual cultures - the setting is a Finnish enclave in Sweden, which probably has more in common with the Soviet Union than the rest of Sweden. Life is rough and hopeless but, like everywhere, it goes on regardless.

I had a hard time reading this novel, despite its many merits, or maybe precisely because of them. Even though I myself have been mostly living in a bubble of educated, intelligent, liberally-minded and internationally-conscious populace, I am well-aware that it is indeed a bubble and not how people generally are. I sometimes catch glimpses of the life outside the bubble and it is very similar to the life in Vittula and its surroundings. Such glimpses rattle me slightly, forcing me to withdraw back into my bubble, where life is not perfect either, just more familiar to my sensibilities. In reality, though, it is equally possible to be unhappy both inside and outside the bubble. It's just that inside the bubble we have a better vocabulary and more practice to talk about our unhappiness.

It is rather curious that a book that is pretty funny has put me in such a gloomy mood. It is also curious that intellectually I acknowledge that this is really good literature but I still did not enjoy the process of reading it. Lots of food for thought though, as long as the thinking is done inside the bubble.