A review by tessisreading2
The Defenceless by Kati Hiekkapelto

3.0

Interesting book; Anna's not very endearing, but she's not really meant to be - she drinks too much, gets into arguments, has an ongoing affair with a married friend (whose wife was a friend also), and makes eyes at a married colleague. I did find her yearning for Serbia both interesting and unconvincing at the same time; we're never really given a reason for why she hasn't gone back to Serbia permanently given her dislike for Finland, and her memories of Serbia and feelings about Serbia are so Hungarian-specific that they don't feel real to me. We're told that Anna lost an older brother to ethnic violence in Serbia but those divisions don't seem to occupy any emotional space in her psyche, which feels weird given that her Hungarianness and Serbianness and semi-statelessness do occupy a huge amount of emotional space in her psyche.