It is true that two novels from Estonia, was a bit much for an autumn filled with hexagonal critics who, often for lack of space, tend to prune face the profusion of books on offer. Moreover, the Baltic books in question are the work of two young women who had never previously published in major Parisian houses. If we add the fact that neither one nor the other has written his book in Estonian (but in Finnish and French) nor live in the Baltic countries (one lives in Helsinki, the other in France for 10 years) ... we can understand that, by necessity more than for "objective" criteria, one has taken precedence over the other in the quest for media recognition.
Besides the raw and rough Purge (Stock) , Manichean thought by some in the Baltic country, Estonia A novel, first book published by Katrina Kalda, born 30 years ago years arrival in Tallinn and 10 years later in Calais , would almost like a mild game of writing. Lace hemmed nicely, almost too ornate in places, but crafted with dexterity by a person claiming a more classic style, stylish, successful.
Is it a coincidence? Sofi Oksanen and Katrina Kalda each have the physique of employment (subjunctive), an appearance that matches their style of writing and about their respective novels. First, I met in Helsinki is cutthroat to the death, his lips, the edges of her green eyes. She wears long gothic outfits. She speaks with confidence, sometimes a bit of disdain. It advances without firing a shot, sure of his destiny as a writer.
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it takes to have built a novel Estonian ( Gallimard). Ambitious architecture, slender pillars, the late Gothic style King's College Chapel, Cambridge. For the rest, nothing british in the plot in question. It takes place also in Estonia in the 1990s with many a trips in the previous decade. Therefore a pivotal period for which this country must reinvent itself at the end of Soviet occupation, which had ended a first period of independence
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August, one of the main characters in the novel, has received this task on behalf of a history of dissent that persists to lend Eerik, industrial and influential shareholder of a newspaper. August is found to lay eggs overnight on a novel by the pre-independence, published as a serial in the same rag. The plot intensifies when
understands that the narrator of a novel Estonian none other than the character created by August for his serial novel. A kind of double, but under the flamboyant and bold strokes, which essentially enables the small and timid writer without talent to satisfy his passion by proxy for the wife of Eerik. Do you follow me? This may seem a bit confusing at first, and explained like that in a hurry, but it is not. And if I am sometimes a bit misplaced, it was better to find me quite amazed by the construction that was taking shape before my eyes. Katrina
Kalda the opportunity to slip a few thoughts on the prospect of an entry of Estonia into the European Union ( "Eerik saw agreements and contracts, August saw Dante, Shakespeare and Schiller. Neither saw Food Standards, the pasteurization of milk, increasing oil packed in plastic or passports embedded fingerprint "), waiting for readers ( they" did not want to read their own history " ) or creative writing. Which allows many turns and twists that I will not mention here.
The second half of the book, which is meant to be intimate in a setting of lush countryside, I was less convinced. I preferred the evocations of rooms in Tallinn Viru or mood, the first major hotel built in the city during the Soviet era to accommodate Western tourists, who left without knowledge of hard currency - some have suspected Of course - they were
other small flats for my taste:
1. the varnish just surfaced which I mentioned earlier that, in places, gives the impression of a composition too thoughtful to flow naturally (but the narrator does not he say: "Everything is being made, nothing is created" ?)
2. the same way the narrator takes us to witness, I, you, us readers. He wants us to confide his feelings, either. But I like least he asks of us, from time to time, to go "verify" dates and names, "wait for several chapters before a particular event occurs, etc.. Maybe there is a method devised by Katrina Kalda to mark the ground so that the reader does not get lost. Was it necessary? If I only ask to be taken by the hand and led into a book, I do not want what you ordered me or my behavior tells me that no color. About
shades and hues, I will quote in conclusion, in which I recognized, and me with no doubt many readers living nearer the poles than the equator.
"At nine o'clock the sun rose at last, in most cases barely detectable blur, in pale yellow and gray, but sometimes orange and bright, a little liquid, resembling an egg the dish with a yellow center has not finished cooking and whose thin membrane transparent, elastic, threatens to burst at any moment. The timid beginnings of the sun, which seemed to appear only to save us, we put the c ow ur in joy. "
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