Book Review | The war does not end in peace and women must learn to keep quiet in the first novel of a psychologist from Oulu

Culture|Book review

Novel

Anu Kolmonen: Partisan waltz. Aviator. 191 pp.

From Oulu psychologist Anu Kolmonen from the debut novel Partisan waltz became relevant last February when Russia invaded Ukraine. Namely, Kolmonen writes about intergenerational war traumas.

When reading the work, you can’t help but think that the war will not end peacefully, but that even unborn children will have their share of it.

Partisan waltz takes place in the northern landscapes and Finland’s last wars, such as Katja Ketun Midwife and Tommi Kinnusen Didn’t say he was sorry. Wild and rugged nature is equated with the human mind, as has been the custom in novels set in Lapland Yrjö from Koko and Timo K. Mukasta from

The firstborn’s dark description of time and place is enlivened by faint bird sightings: “the woodpecker repeats its own name over the foggy swamp” and “the cabbage breast cries in the light of the spring morning”.

Partisan waltz the cover image shows three ears of corn, three generations. Pathetic Partisan waltz is grandfather’s favorite song, where the one going into the “dark night” tells his beloved to kiss the ear of corn if he doesn’t return alive from the battle. He promises to live forever in cob heads.

The song does not take war injuries into account.

But in Kolmonen’s novel, the men return from the war “with limp legs and mind”: “I can’t be one of them, let’s sleep and cry and sleep, let’s run from the devil, night after night after night.”

Women have to run their daily lives and learn to keep quiet. Children only ask the wrong questions and learn to be ashamed of themselves. A psychologist’s eye is accurate.

A novel the main character is Anna, who searches in vain for a smile in old photographs. “Why did I have to be born into the home of an idealistic communist priest and a depressed single mother?” he laments.

And states later that a person must have roots and wings. Kolmonen’s people are stuck in their roots, but they don’t seem to have any wings.

Anna, “a link in the women’s chain”, writes in the first pages: “this is also the story of my mother Vapu, my grandmother Aino and my mother-in-law Irja”. Some tell their own story and that of their family in common language, others in their own dialect.

Everyone remembers things in the best light for themselves. And bitterness stings.

Three the perspective technique used works well, even though Anna’s parts swell towards the end of the piece into gibberish. Maybe the novel would have needed one more round of writing, where the fluff would have been cut out.

For example, the role of the fictional Joonas in this women’s novel did not quite fit.

But Anu Kolmonen has given his test. The sequel follows and the writer’s career is taking shape.

Helsingin Sanomat’s award for the best debut of the year will be awarded on November 17.