When I Forgot Elina Hirvonen 9781846270956 Books
Download As PDF : When I Forgot Elina Hirvonen 9781846270956 Books
Rare book
When I Forgot Elina Hirvonen 9781846270956 Books
Critics seem to have praised this slim little novel extravagantly, using words like "potent, fragile, and tender" (NY Times); they also say that its fractured style and theme of mental breakdown perfectly fits the post-9/11 world. Well yes, but I found it a mess of a book in which a number of broken or fragile lives are somewhat arbitrarily brought together in a narrative that makes wild jumps between place, character, and period. This is due to the example of what appears to be Michael Cunningham's THE HOURS, which the heroine Anna (a Finnish reporter and part-time student, or vice-versa) has received as a gift from her visiting American professor and now lover, Ian Brown. Ian is an expert on Virginia Woolf (whose suicide is mentioned repeatedly); his father went mad after serving in Vietnam and is now hospitalized. Anna is the self-doubting daughter of a pastor with anger-management issues, and she has an elder brother also in mental hospital. Flashbacks, memories, and shared stories climax (for no particularly good reason) in a Helsinki demonstration protesting America's involvement in Iraq.Virginia Woolf is fashionable just now as a referent; the psychological trauma of 9/11 is only just now beginning to be explored in fiction; and the Vietnam War indeed scarred an entire generation -- a legacy that might well be equalled by that of Iraq. But you can't just throw so many hot topics together and assume they will work. Had Hirvonen had the iron control of Michael Cunningham, the example of THE HOURS might have counted for more, but mental disintegration makes a poor organizing principle. She rightly praises Woolf's ability to portray her characters from the inside, but she can do this herself only by fits and starts. And the best books on the post-9/11 mindset, at least so far -- novels like Joseph O'Neill's NETHERLAND and Don DeLillo's FALLING MAN -- approach the topic far more subtly. While I give credit to Elina Hirvonen for tackling painful themes (and the character of the psychotic brother has the ring of personal truth), I would like to see her develop a less scattershot method of handling them.
Product details
|
Tags : When I Forgot [Elina Hirvonen] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Rare book,Elina Hirvonen,When I Forgot,Granta Books,1846270952,Fiction General,Fiction : Literary,Modern fiction
People also read other books :
- The Search For My Inner "I" Joseph W Macy 9781483679297 Books
- The Search For My Inner "I" Joseph W Macy 9781483679297 Books
- The Search For My Inner "I" Joseph W Macy 9781483679297 Books
- The Quadity Jacob I Pfeiffer 9780692818305 Books
- The Quadity Jacob I Pfeiffer 9780692818305 Books
When I Forgot Elina Hirvonen 9781846270956 Books Reviews
This small translated-from the Finnish book was simply beautiful. The microcosm of a family dealing w mental illness, while the world deals w the madness of 9/11. As an American, I tend to think 9/11 happened to "us", however this book desrcibes how everyone world wide was affected. The translator did a wonderful job in keeping the beauty and emotion intact. It is a beatifully written book about a sad subject, but written from the heart. The characters were described with such intensity, that I could actually see what they looked and smelled like.(you will understand this after reading) To say this book was about "a brother-sister relationship" misses the more global theme presented by the author. I was moved to tears by the description of Ian being confronted as "a war-monger" simply because he was an American. The conflicting emotions he felt while living in a foreign land during an American crisis, while disagreeing with his President- all in the context of a father ruined by Viet Nam...wow! Just a beautiful, beautiful book by an amazing writer. Don't miss the more global theme when reading it!!!
First, a disclosure I stopped reading the book on page 155 (out of 180 pages). The Virginia Wolff-like attempt at stream of consciousness writing didn't work. The intentional jumps from real-time event to flashbacks were written without transition causing me confusion and disorientation. The self-indulgent and overwrought focus of the narrator, Anna, about her past and present with Joona, her mentally ill brother, and her family were wrenching, as the front cover book review quote says, but it was all too much of the same thing. A family, and narrator, unable to cope with, and come to terms with, the unreachable son and brother.
Anna's boyfriend, Ian, an American literature professor, in Finland lecturing a class of Anna's, has his own traumatic family history, including the father unable to deal with his Vietnam experience. Ian also has his personal emotional traumas from childhood unresolved, but which come to the surface during his time with Anna.
The connection in the book, the 155 out of 180 pages I read, with the terrible events of 9/11 are cursory for this reader. I wasn't able to see how that day, and the days following, had any relationship with the rest of the story.
I didn't want to deal with Anna, her familial tragedies, nor Ian and his dysfunctional family any more.
I greatly looked forward to reading this book, but, as you can tell, I found little, if any, of what the other reviewers discovered and enjoyed about this pitiful, confusing, narcissistic and tragic story.
Critics seem to have praised this slim little novel extravagantly, using words like "potent, fragile, and tender" (NY Times); they also say that its fractured style and theme of mental breakdown perfectly fits the post-9/11 world. Well yes, but I found it a mess of a book in which a number of broken or fragile lives are somewhat arbitrarily brought together in a narrative that makes wild jumps between place, character, and period. This is due to the example of what appears to be Michael Cunningham's THE HOURS, which the heroine Anna (a Finnish reporter and part-time student, or vice-versa) has received as a gift from her visiting American professor and now lover, Ian Brown. Ian is an expert on Virginia Woolf (whose suicide is mentioned repeatedly); his father went mad after serving in Vietnam and is now hospitalized. Anna is the self-doubting daughter of a pastor with anger-management issues, and she has an elder brother also in mental hospital. Flashbacks, memories, and shared stories climax (for no particularly good reason) in a Helsinki demonstration protesting America's involvement in Iraq.
Virginia Woolf is fashionable just now as a referent; the psychological trauma of 9/11 is only just now beginning to be explored in fiction; and the Vietnam War indeed scarred an entire generation -- a legacy that might well be equalled by that of Iraq. But you can't just throw so many hot topics together and assume they will work. Had Hirvonen had the iron control of Michael Cunningham, the example of THE HOURS might have counted for more, but mental disintegration makes a poor organizing principle. She rightly praises Woolf's ability to portray her characters from the inside, but she can do this herself only by fits and starts. And the best books on the post-9/11 mindset, at least so far -- novels like Joseph O'Neill's NETHERLAND and Don DeLillo's FALLING MAN -- approach the topic far more subtly. While I give credit to Elina Hirvonen for tackling painful themes (and the character of the psychotic brother has the ring of personal truth), I would like to see her develop a less scattershot method of handling them.
0 Response to "[KKM]≫ [PDF] Free When I Forgot Elina Hirvonen 9781846270956 Books"
Post a Comment