Rosa Liksom

This is the classic set-up of two fundamentally incompatible people trapped together for an extended period and forced to learn to get along, but it's far from being a silly romantic comedy. We're in the dying Soviet Union in the uncertain weather of a mid-1980s spring, where the Finnish postgrad archaeology student Anna finds herself sharing a compartment on the seemingly endless train journey from Moscow to Ulan Bator with the rough-hewn construction worker Vadim Nikolaevich.

Vadim — show more whom the narrator only ever calls "the man" — soon reveals himself as unpleasant company in all sorts of ways. He's a violent misogynist who is proud of beating his wife only in private, frequents prostitutes, drinks far too much, seems to have killed a few people with his flick-knife, and is forever telling stories that are clearly designed to shock Anna, even if they aren't always strictly true. But he does have a very sure sense of how to survive in the complicated world of Soviet semi-legality through which they are travelling, and he seems to feel an obligation of hospitality towards Anna. She's travelling to get a breathing-space from a complicated situation in Moscow, and she seems to be almost grateful for his unwanted attentions as a distraction from all that she's left behind.

A wonderfully convincing portrait of Soviet Russia at a very specific moment in history, obviously observed in detail at first-hand, and performing the difficult trick of mixing a travel book with a novel without the joins ever becoming too obvious. show less

Me një realizëm të ashpër që ngjason me poezinë, Rosa Liksom tregon takimin midis dy fateve, midis botës mashkullore dhe femërore, por në radhë të parë udhëtimin në fundin e një perandorie që duket se shpërbëhet në shenjat e para të shkrirjes, në zemrën e një populli krenar por të zhgënjyer, të ashpër dhe sentimental, që jeton në nostalgjinë e përjetshme të kalimit nga e djeshmja tek e ardhmja, në ëndrrën e përhershme çehoviane: "në Moskë, në Moskë!"

A young Finnish woman sets out on a long train journey across the Soviet Union, from Moscow to Ulan Baator, Mongolia. The person assigned to share her compartment is an older Russian man, often drunk, usually loud, sometimes unsafe. But also expansive and somewhat friendly. As the journey progresses, he talks, the Russian landscape scrolls past the windows and the trains stops in towns further and further from Moscow.

I'm not sure how to describe this book, except that it is about a place show more and a style of life that doesn't exist in the same way anymore, written about vividly and without judgement. The protagonist's words are omitted from the story, leaving only the place and the people, especially her travel companion, to speak for her. This is an extraordinary novel and one I'm so pleased to have read. show less

The best thing about the old days is that they’re over…But nothing is ever really gone for good.

In the last days or hours of her life, an elderly woman living in Lapland, Finland thinks back on her life; her childhood as a devout member of the “Little Lottas,” her days as a Nazi sympathizer, then married young to an older military man (a friend of her father’s), and her later years a woman—as noted in one blurb on the back cover—who has been, for most of her life, on the wrong show more side of history.

This story is both fascinating and often repulsive; it’s definitely addictive and strangely timely . Liskom’s protagonist is not quite likable, but she honest about who she is. By the end of the story the reader understands how one might take this path. And while unlikely a Finnish ‘everywoman’ she seems inextricably tied to what her nation is experiencing.

I admit to not knowing very much—except some generalities—about Finland or the Lapland area of Finland; or the country’ involvement in the various wars of the 20th century, so I picked the brain of my husband and occasionally made short excursions to the internet. Considering the current political climate here in the states, the choices we face every day; it’s a strangely prescient tale.

"Little by little I got my head turned around to a new point of view. I started to think that Germany had been rescued from Nazism and that the war was all the German’s fault, that it was their precious violence that had given us all these ruined cities. I felt no pity for them. Now I think that Nazism didn’t end when Hitler killed himself. I think that, given a chance, new Nazis and fascists will spring up,because that’s how people are. They keep repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results. There’s loving-kindness inside all of us, but it sits side by side with cruelty, heartlessness, and indifference."

I read this book because I had enjoyed Liksom's previously translated book - Compartment No. 6. I have her "Dark Paradise" in the TBR pile. show less