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A review by kellyvandamme
Little Siberia by Antti Tuomainen
5.0
Little Siberia is about Joel, who is a priest and former military man, and he also works in the local veterans museum as a guard. At the beginning of the book, a race car driver is pushing his car to the limit on the dark and snowy roads of rural Finland, when a meteorite strikes and lands on his passenger seat. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but this opening scene is brilliantly summed up in the striking cover of this book.
The meteorite is placed in the local museum before it will be transported to London. A few of people realise that the meteorite is worth a lot of money and it becomes a target, and in the process so does Joel, who volunteered to take the night shifts in the museum for as long as the meteorite is there. But stopping thieves from getting away with the treasure that fell from the sky is not Joel’s only problem: his wife tells him she’s pregnant and he’s sure that he can’t have created this new life, but then who did?
Both as a priest and as a man his faith has become quite wobbly. Who and what should he even believe in? In God? In himself? In what the doctors told him? In what his wife tells him? In the Almighty Elk? (Don’t ask)
As I’ve come to expect from Antti Tuomainen, I found Little Siberia a suspenseful, dark and funny book. It’s hard to explain to those who are new to Tuomainen, you have to experience it to fully understand it. I think his books are truly unique, I personally haven’t found this Tuomainen trait anywhere else. It’s not what I would call comedy. It’s this very suspenseful crime thriller story, you’re practically biting your nails sitting on the edge of your seat and then there’s this one funny remark or a hilarious observation or a scene filled to the brim with this dark and dry sense of humour and it takes you completely by surprise and you just burst out laughing. And while there are other authors who rely on comic relief to ease the tension, none I’ve read do it quite like Antti does.
Recommended!
The meteorite is placed in the local museum before it will be transported to London. A few of people realise that the meteorite is worth a lot of money and it becomes a target, and in the process so does Joel, who volunteered to take the night shifts in the museum for as long as the meteorite is there. But stopping thieves from getting away with the treasure that fell from the sky is not Joel’s only problem: his wife tells him she’s pregnant and he’s sure that he can’t have created this new life, but then who did?
Both as a priest and as a man his faith has become quite wobbly. Who and what should he even believe in? In God? In himself? In what the doctors told him? In what his wife tells him? In the Almighty Elk? (Don’t ask)
As I’ve come to expect from Antti Tuomainen, I found Little Siberia a suspenseful, dark and funny book. It’s hard to explain to those who are new to Tuomainen, you have to experience it to fully understand it. I think his books are truly unique, I personally haven’t found this Tuomainen trait anywhere else. It’s not what I would call comedy. It’s this very suspenseful crime thriller story, you’re practically biting your nails sitting on the edge of your seat and then there’s this one funny remark or a hilarious observation or a scene filled to the brim with this dark and dry sense of humour and it takes you completely by surprise and you just burst out laughing. And while there are other authors who rely on comic relief to ease the tension, none I’ve read do it quite like Antti does.
Recommended!