Popular Music from Vittula: A Novel
by Mikael Niemi
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Book Summary Information
Author: Mikael NiemiTranslator: Laurie Thompson
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-10-05
ISBN: 1583226591
Number of pages: 237
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Book Reviews of Popular Music from Vittula: A Novel
Book Review: Like life on a wintery sort of Mars
Summary: 5 Stars
This novel was recommended to me by fiddler Colm O'Riain and poet Pireeni Sundaralingam, both much more cosmopolitan than I. They keep in better touch with great European writing. It's as wonderful as they said it would be, and hard to describe because Vittula is truly another world, a least as Niemi portrays it. Picture kids at the far end of nowhere trying to make out the Beatles on short wave radio and practicing on broomstick guitars. Picture winter-goofy Scandinavian men with too much to drink, too long in the sweathouse, and too little to shoot at--in a funny/weird sort of way! Really, this book will take you to place you'll remember more vividly and strangely fondly than most of the places you've actually been. Take Me With You When You GoNutty to Meet You! Dr. Peanut Book #1
Summary of Popular Music from Vittula: A Novel
Popular Music from Vittula tells the fantastical story of a young boy's unordinary existence, peopled by a visiting African priest, a witch in the heart of the forest, cousins from Missouri, an old Nazi, a beautiful girl with a black Volvo, silent men and tough women, a champion-bicyclist music teacher with a thumb in the middle of his hand?and, not least, on a shiny vinyl disk, the Beatles.The story unfolds in sweltering wood saunas, amidst chain thrashings and gang warfare, learning to play the guitar in the garage, over a traditional wedding meal, on the way to China, during drinking competitions, while learning secret languages, playing ice hockey surrounded by snow drifts, outsmarting mice, discovering girls, staging a first rock concert, peeing in the snow, skiing under a sparkling midnight sky. In the manner of David Mitchell?s Black Swan Green, Mikael Niemi tells a story of a rural Sweden at once foreign and familiar, as a magical childhood slowly fades with the seasons into adult reality.
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