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A review by bluestarfish
Popular Music from Vittula by Mikael Niemi
5.0
Before reading this book I was struggling to see how a book with this title and an author called Niemi could be a Swedish book, but it is a novel about growing up in a town called Pajala near the Finnish border so it makes sense to me now... Matti and Niila are growing up in the mid 60s in a small town in the back of beyond. This autobiography from Matti's point of view sheds light on that and this area of Sweden where people speak Swedish and Finnish with accents and don't quite belong anywhere. As an aside the Tornedalen Finnish (meänkieli) was super interesting to read and I'm glad that was left in the translation.
The chapters are rather episodic moments in the life of the boys. It's dark in places, hilarious in others, and all permeated by the slightly unreliable narrator's voice looking back at his childhood in a time when the world was changing around him. The Beatles on vinyl find there way all the way up north bringing fresh opportunities to the boys among the more traditional saunas, air rifle wars, home-brew drinking competitions, and ice hockey games. "Ollyu nidis lav" as the Beatles sing. Poignant, funny, eye-opening, gruesome mouse mass-murdering...glad I came across this interesting novel.
The chapters are rather episodic moments in the life of the boys. It's dark in places, hilarious in others, and all permeated by the slightly unreliable narrator's voice looking back at his childhood in a time when the world was changing around him. The Beatles on vinyl find there way all the way up north bringing fresh opportunities to the boys among the more traditional saunas, air rifle wars, home-brew drinking competitions, and ice hockey games. "Ollyu nidis lav" as the Beatles sing. Poignant, funny, eye-opening, gruesome mouse mass-murdering...glad I came across this interesting novel.