Book Review | Emmi-Liia Sjöholm’s novelty is a polished example of the future of audiobooks: The listener feels as if they are hearing half a private conversation

Culture|Book review

Emmi-Liia Sjöholm: Hippos. Space. 255 pp. Readers Samuli Niittymäki and Pihla Viitala. 3h 34 min

Audiobooks the future has come, and Emmi-Liia Sjöholm enters the new playing field with confidence. What can be done, what works, what is the audiobook literature like?

Hippos is an elegant, controlled entity that speaks the language of its target audience – the townspeople in their thirties and forties – effortlessly. Samuli Niittymäki and Pihla Viitala are in their roles at home, do not seem to read their replicas but engage in genuine dialogue. Both have a pleasant, warm voice that makes it easy to follow the speech.

Eevis and May sit and chat with the freedom and openness that summer night marks. Through the turns, a picture of both the landscape and the characters is painted, but equally the whole is built of intonations, breaks, tones of sounds. The listener feels as if sitting next to them, half secretly listening to the opening of two lives.

The themes are also partly familiar from Sjöholm’s firstborn, a couple of people from a very large readership, On paper, another -roman: about relationships, love, humanity.

And as with the firstborn, Sjöholm now asks why he succumbed to unspoken expectations. The title of the work comes from the rather violent seemingly intense way of having sex with hippos, through which Eevis reflects on women’s consent to sex even when they don’t want to.

Towards the end of the work, the question is more and more about why individuals generally agree with society’s expectations.

Hippos works better as an audiobook than as a novel. On paper, the text takes the form of a manuscript, the nuances and rhythm of the text dripping out of the turns, even though Sjöholm writes fluently.

On paper, another was built from several moments, In horses there is only one actual scene, even if the past moments are visited through remarks. Compared to the debut work, Sjöholm’s second novel is brighter, more polished – even to the extent that the garbage is missed in places, a clumsy insignificance to the dialogue.

Eevis and Touko’s replicas are a complete collection of the trendiest conscious speech topics of recent years, from equality to monogamy, paternity leave to divorce and therapy.

“EEVIS: I realized at some point you wouldn’t live in the closet. You are not human.

MAY: What is it?

EEVIS: You just needed a lot of people around. I don’t want you to have them but on the phone. And it’s not a weakness. And I’ve never really been monogamous, so even when I was, you haven’t always been here and it won’t leave, so you won’t leave my partners as soon as I’m in love with something new. No one oo ever say you won’t grab leave. I want to share everyday life with many dear people. ”

Overnight, the supervisors of the dialogue decide Arpan (Aaro Airola) Carousel rolling softly, like a tuning song.

Emmi-Liia Sjöholm Hippos is one example of the future of audio literature, but not the only one: it works just as well as an audio book, for example Pirkko Saision 24.5 hours long Passionwhich the author himself read on tape, or Rosa Liksomin Wayin which dialect plays a big role.

But what sets it apart from listening to an audiobook – and does it matter? I don’t know that anymore.