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ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
“‘In oamas du, leat du iežat. Leat beare luoikkašin munnje,’ she whis-pered. ‘I do not own you, you belong to yourself. You are only mine on loan.’ She’d once heard Mattias say this to a calf, and she'd repeated the words quietly to herself each night before she fell asleep to make sure she wouldn't forget them when it was her turn to release a calf.”
TITLE—Stolen (Swedish: Stöld)
AUTHOR—Ann-Helén Laestadius
TRANSLATOR—Rachel Willson-Broyles (Swedish —> English)
PUBLISHED—2021 (trans. 2023)
PUBLISHER—Romanus & Selling (trans. Scribner—Simon & Schuster)
GENRE—contemporary literary fiction; modern classic
SETTING—Sápmi, colonized as Sweden, Finland, & Norway
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—coming of age & Sámi childhood experience, Sámi reindeer lifeways, the insidious effects of culturcide & christian fascism, skipped generations & failed eldership, suicide of Indigenous youth, colonial-patriarchy in Indigenous communities, systemic (esp. police) & societal (settlers & their children) racism, school bullying, tourism & cultural appropriation, how Indigeneity is about a lot more than just blood-ties
WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
CHARACTERS—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
STORY/PLOT—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
BONUS ELEMENT/S—I really appreciated the inclusion of the character Minna—would have loved to have met her mother, the duodji artist.
PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
PREMISE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
EXECUTION—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
“At first she had naïvely hoped that the police would be successful. Then came the inexplicable shame. Of not being believed. Of not being worth more. And her equally shame-filled father, who couldn't protect his family, was so full of a despair he could never allow anyone to see that he'd built a fence around the house. She had watched him hammer with a furious energy, paint with a spattering brush. The grass would be speckled white for a long time.”
My thoughts:
I put off reading this book for sooo long because of the CWs & even having all the spoilers & feeling safe & well-supported, this was still one of the hardest books I’ve ever read. The only thing that made it all “okay” is how intentional all the author’s choices were and how clearly she wanted to demonstrate the role of the reindeer not just economically & agriculturally, but culturally & spiritually for the Sámi people as well.
I really appreciated Laestadius’s complex, relatable characters and her thoughtful handling of themes such as inherited trauma, racism, suicide, & grief. Similarly to GoldenEagle’s THE NARROWS OF FEAR (WAPAWIPOSCIKANIK), the villain POV parts were super rough to read and I definitely skipped over at least one whole chapter, but justice through Spirit was again the trajectory of that arc. Overall the story was profoundly moving, delicately rendered, and powerfully articulated. Plus the ending was solid.
I would recommend this book to fans of Louise Erdrich. This book is best read gently and optimistically.
Final note: I’m still looking forward to reading the English translations of books two and three in the trilogy when they are published.
“‘Nu lat dea,’ she said. ‘You can't be cruel to animals and get away with it. That's the truth.’”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
CW // graphic(!!!) animal cruelty (reindeer 💔) including torture, indiscriminate killing, & other kinds of serious abuse—and it’s not just one scene it’s multiple scenes throughout 😵💫, ecocide, suicide of Indigenous youth, nomad school, genocide, culturcide & christian fascism, graphic racism, Alzheimer’s, grief, birth complications, home invasion (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)
Season: Winter
Further Reading—
- FIRE FROM THE SKY by Moa Backe Åstot
- THE NIGHT BETWEEN THE DAYS by Ailo Gaup
- ÆDNAN by Linnea Axelsson
- Louise Erdrich
- Tove Jansson
Favorite Quotes—
“Her grandmother had a word for everything, but only in Sámi. In Swedish, Áhkku felt she had too few words, but sometimes she couldn't speak Sámi without having to mix in some Swedish… According to Áhkku, Swedish was missing the melody of the heart.”
“Once you had gazed into a reindeer’s eyes and understood, you realized you had no choice but to be right there.”
“She'd always had a hard time understanding Marika. Not talking to your kids? How ridiculous was that? Sometimes it was so obvious that she hadn't grown up around reindeer. She might wear a gákti and speak Sámi, but there were some things she would never fully understand.”
“Over the past few years, this was their ritual. When they were little, they came along with Hanna and watched her plant flowers or light candles.
When they got old enough to do it on their own, Hanna didn't come as often. She didn't believe he was there anyway. And forgiveness seemed far off. But it was seldom to anyone's advantage to be angry at the dead.”
“She shuddered and placed her palm over [his] smiling face. What if it was the ones who took their own lives that were doing the right thing? The ones who said they couldn't take it anymore and left behind everything that hurt. The ones who made a statement to the whole world. See what vou drive us to do? We can't take it anymore. We would rather kill ourselves than watch our reindeer be tortured and killed while we listen to how much you hate us. We would rather kill ourselves than watch you take our land for a mine that won't give you more than a decade's work, tops.”
“‘I don't think anyone who doesn't have reindeer can really understand.
It hurts.’ Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat. ‘We don't just work with the reindeer, they're part of our way of life. And when no one cares when our reindeer are killed, it…’ …It was always harder to keep going once her anger had drained away. When hopelessness took over. When the feeling that nothing mattered struck her full force.”
“Being Sámi meant carrying your history with you, to stand before that heavy burden as a child and choose to bear it or not. But how could you choose not to bear your family's history and carry on your inheritance? … [He] had tried, he wavered and he bore it, but in the end he couldn't manage any longer. But it wasn't acceptable, to say you wanted a different life. And she hadn't listened, that was the truth. She had been impressed by him, by his desire for the other possibilities life had to offer; she had believed that he was the one who would dare to do what no one else did. But she had misunderstood, and it was all her fault. No matter which way she looked at those last days with him, she always came to the same conclusion. She should have noticed, and she should have helped. She would not fail with Jon-Isak, because she had removed her guiding hand from his life.”
“‘Forget those old men. You did the right thing.’
‘There's no such thing as doing the right thing here, you know that.’”
“You have to laugh, or you'll die on the inside. Every part of you wil store it up, you know. Your body stores pain.”
“How much longer would they manage to sew their gákti, joik along with the songs, and party the night away? Only to wake up to a perfectly ordinary day and nothing had changed.”
“They walked in opposite directions to their respective schools, their faces storm clouds. The schoolyard between them was a war zone. They were only picking up where their fathers had left off once upon a time.”
“At the very back of the garage, next to big plastic bins, were the skis Elsa had received when she was nine. They looked brand-new, hardly used. The skis were a curse—so she'd thought as a child. They brought misfortune; she and the skis brought death with them. She'd been on them when she found Nástegallu and when Lasse towed her behind his snowmobile for the last time. So it was only right that the skis should stay in a corner until she grew too tall to use them. Mom had wanted to sell them, but how could they allow the accursed skis to be handed over to another child? She couldn't say so to Mom, but she averted her eyes awfully fast and shook her head every time anyone mentioned selling them. So the skis had stayed. Now she wished they'd been burned up long ago. They were like a branding scar, a reminder of everything she could have, and should have, kept from happening. Still, she let her hand run over one ski before she took out her new ones.”
“Then he was there with her. This was nothing unusual or strange. His laughter in her ear, the sensation of him. There were never any words, but she smiled, affirming his presence. He didn't weigh on her, and when he vanished he did so without leaving her feeling abandoned. Just certain that this wasn't the last time she'd feel him there with her. No one knew about these moments, and she didn't want to tell anyone. Not that they would think it was strange, but sometimes talk could ruin a thing.”
“Yes. She closed her eyes. Yes, they'd still been there, shining their head lights on the reindeer when the patrol showed up. The policemen weren't sure how to react at first, hadn't known how to respond to that silence.
They had approached the bodies of the reindeer with awkward steps and mumbling voices, clearly bothered about being observed. The breath of the reindeer herders turned to frosty vapor. In the end, they didn't have the strength to be angry. There was only room for the deepest sorrow. Once the reindeer had been taken away, they turned off their headlights and sat in silence in the dark.”
“‘I'll handle it.’
‘How?’
‘I'll handle it, Elsa.’
That meant a half hearted email would go out to all the parents. An email that certain types would respond to—those who didn't appreciate that their well-behaved children should have to be caught up in a collective punishment even though they were always obedient. And those who felt a jab of pain in their chests and wondered if they shouldn't just give up, move to town, and start over. They wrote in on occasion, demanding action, but what could be done when the hatred didn't actually come from the children?”
“And they forgot about the children. The ones on the precipice of a new life. Yes, that was how Elsa thought of it, a precipice they must choose to fly over or fall. …the teenagers who were hesitant to choose the reindeer because they didn't want to be the last generation in the reindeer forest, when everything went to hell once and for all. Being forced to choose something other than your family's inheritance, out of fear.”
“But Elsa didn't feel derision for these folks; she never had. She imagined there must be some grief there. Maybe it hadn't been their choice
to go a different direction; there were so many choices that no one had made out of free will. But she also didn't want them to come here and pretend; no, they should show a little humility when they made a guest appearance during an activity whose importance they didn't understand.”
“‘I don't own you, you belong to yourself. You are only mine on loan.’ The reindeer were biekka oapmi, belonging to the wind. Addjá had explained this to her carefully when she was little. You must never brag about your reindeer herd, and you must be aware that your good fortune with them could vanish at any moment. You must take nothing for granted; a reindeer herd was never a constant.”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide, Grief, Racism, Animal death, Animal cruelty, Racial slurs, and Terminal illness
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