Elina Hirvonen

Elina Hirvonen’s novel When I Forgot, is a striking portrayal of two adults dealing with the mental illness of close family members. The reader is drawn into the lives of Ian and Anna, two Finnish writers. Hirvonen explores the scars left by each character’s experience with mental illness. She demonstrates the difficulty of living one’s own life successfully while dealing with a kind of survivor’s guilt at leaving behind the ill family member. We learn early on that Anna’s brother, show more Joona, is a paranoid schizophrenic, though the author never explicitly names his illness. Anna’s boyfriend and professor, Ian, struggles with his father’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Alcoholism, as well. Ultimately, Hirvonen leaves the reader with hopefulness that Ian and Anna will be able to live their live healthfully and happily despite their brushes with illness. Overall the novel is well written and engaging. However, Hirvonen’s sub-story surrounding the 9/11 terrorist attacks seems out of place. I think it detracts from the main conflict and is not thoroughly developed enough to bring any great meaning to the novel or to the event itself. show less

There couldn’t be much worse than being the parent or sibling of a horrendous criminal…someone who has randomly shot multiple people for example. Except perhaps being the parent or sibling of a someone who isn’t that criminal…yet. Someone you know isn’t thinking or acting rationally but who is unable to accept the love or help you offer. WHEN TIME RUNS OUT is the compelling, sorrow-filled story of a deeply troubled young Finnish man, Aslak, and the family powerless to help him.

The show more book is not concerned with the facts of the mass shooting. We learn only the bare minimum about the mechanics of the incident, which takes place in Helsinki, and the victims of the crime. Instead the book focuses on the people at the centre of events. Part of the story is told from Aslak’s point of view so we learn his reasoning for his actions and something of the events of his life which might shed light on how his thinking developed. Interspersed with his view of the world are the perspectives of Laura, an environmental campaigner and Aslak’s mother, and his sister Aava, a doctor working in the most troubled communities on the planet at least in part because she has been unable to get through to her younger brother.

I was a little reluctant to try this book given most reviews make the inevitable comparison with Lionel Shriver’s WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN but I am pleased to say WHEN TIME RUNS OUT is, at least in my eyes, a much better exploration of the difficult subject of irretrievably damaged human beings. Hirvonen, a journalist like Shriver, has created characters who are less sure of themselves, less able to label and classify the actions of their loved ones. They observe and struggle and flounder. As most of us would likely do when faced with the unthinkable. In the end I found each of them at least partly sympathetic…even Aslak. None of them are wholly likeable, but it is possible to feel for their pain and their inability to fix the unfixable.

There are some flaws, the book does get a bit didactic when espousing Aslak’s beliefs for example. But its sparseness, simplicity and authentic feel to its characters’ struggles make it very, very readable. show less

An eye-opening generational viewpoint from the children of the baby-boomers. Deals with precise clarity and incisive insight with the awfulness of ordinary, everyday lives, the hurt and damage that so many live through. it offers a particular insight into the experience of being close (too close) to someone whose reality is just slightly skewiff of everyone else's, and shows how that is rational, in its own terms, as well as self-destructive and unbearably painful to watch from outside. And show more yet this book is wonderfully uplifting in places. i don't know how the author did that and I look foward to reading more from her. show less

'memory is one of life's burdens that we can do nothing about'
By sally tarbox on 8 April 2012
Format: Paperback
I read this in one sitting; it's the terribly sad story of Elena and her brother, Joona, who is in a Helsinki mental hospital. The accounts of his life are punctuated by happy family recollections - and darker ones. Did their father's brutality cause his son's emotional state?
Elena intersperses her narrative with memories of her own lonely childhood; her partner, American lecturer show more Ian, has his own demons too as a bullied youth with a father damaged by Vietnam.
A deeply moving book, to which the little flashes of happy memory give added poignancy. show less