Book review | The main character falls in love with an intern at the workplace, but then problems begin

Novel

Dante Lehtinen: Love doesn’t die, even if I gave it a handful of sleeping pills. Big Dipper. 448 pp.

I don’t belongs to the school of thought that declares that the maximum length of a book should be 300 pages and the book should not be so heavy that it is difficult to read it in bed.

But nowadays domestic novel literature often swells to proportions that are not positive in terms of the book format and the story. This is further influenced by the audiobook industry: the number of minutes listened to in relation to compensation.

Dante Lehtinen (b. 1988) in his debut novel Love never dies, even if I gave it a handful of sleeping pills there are many good ingredients. But there has been at least no attempt to summarize the book in terms of costing.

The impression is rather the opposite. The book contains the ingredients of two different works. It’s confusing, even a little discouraging.

Still life is so delicious that the novel’s unnamed main character works as a publisher in a large publishing house. He lives a smooth and secure middle-class life, but something is missing: love.

A creature called Rakkaus appears in life, a large black cat beast that moves in with the main character. At the same time, a new intern comes to the publishing house, with whom the main character falls in love and thus gives romantic love a chance in his life.

As Pajtim Statovci My cat in Yugoslavia (2014) also in Lehtinen’s prose, the cat plays the role of giving courage to the main character. Rakkaus-kissa gives the narrator permission to indulge in previously forbidden desires, such as watching romantic comedies and listening to cheesy 1980s romantic ballads.

The beast is also present in the novel through an influence that is more distant in time. Persian poet Mawlana Rumi in poetry, love is a blood-drinking black lion. Lehtinen quotes Rum throughout the book between chapters.

Magical realism has been delightfully present in domestic prose art in recent years, but Lehtinen’s book forgets its strongest character as the book progresses. They get rid of the cat with a twist that seems hastily invented.

With that we get to a new plot point, which seems to be what we wanted to get to all along. Then we dwell on it for an unnecessarily long time – especially considering the level of the sentence. My partner starts accusing the main character of sexual harassment at the workplace and an investigation is made.

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The narrator’s partner is presented as a delusional meth-activist, lost in his own awareness.

The treatment of the subject creates a setting that will probably be enjoyed by many men who think feminism has gone too far. However, Lehtinen does everything he can to get a neutral position and to explain openly in the book that he does not want the narrative to be used as an assault weapon for these men.

The narrator’s partner is presented as a lost in his own awareness, a misguided metho-activist who sees unequal power structures everywhere and extorts his own interests with fashionable ideas that have been bought but not internalized. The man becomes a victim of mental violence and, as the narrator, a boring scumbag.

The subject is explosive in this era, and no doubt that is why the work gets stuck in circularity.

Processing there are definitely raffle ingredients, but I don’t feel that the narrative and the plot grow into a very interesting presentation about love and the experiences related to it.

As the book progresses, the sentence is clearly looser and has the uncomfortable flavor of exaggeration.

Lehtinen is at his strongest in the beginning of the novel, when the structure is under control. Then the expression at the edge of love is concise, sincere, clear and laconic. Prince’s Purple Rain the use makes you happy and the best jokes about the publishing industry and work culture sink in when, for example, podcasts are created for crisis communication.

It’s a shame that a book that starts well ends up being overblown. Then it pops.