True: A Novel

True: A Novel

by Riikka Pulkkinen
True: A Novel

True: A Novel

by Riikka Pulkkinen

eBook

$10.99 

Available on Compatible NOOK Devices and the free NOOK Apps.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers


Overview

Elsa is dying. Her husband, Martti, and daughter Eleonoora are struggling to accept the crushing thought that they are soon to lose her. As Elsa becomes ever more fragile, Eleonoora’s childhood memories are slipping away. Meanwhile, Eleonoora’s daughter Anna spends her time pondering the fates of passersby. For her the world is full of stories. But the story that will change her forever is the one about Eeva, her mother’s nanny, whom her grandparents have been silent about for years. Eeva’s forgotten story, which Anna first learns of when she discovers an old dress of Eeva’s, is finally revealed layer by layer. The tale that unfolds is about a mother and daughter, about how memory can deceive us—and sometimes that is the most merciful thing that can happen.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781590515013
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
Publication date: 03/20/2012
Sold by: Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format: eBook
Pages: 368
Sales rank: 963,245
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

Riikka Pulkkinen studied literature and philosophy at the University of Helsinki. Her debut novel, The Border, sparked international interest when it was published in 2006. Her second novel, True, will mark her English debut. Riikka Pulkkinen received the Kaarle Prize in February 2007 and the Laila Hirvisaari Prize in May 2007.
 
Lola M. Rogers is a freelance translator of Finnish literature living in Seattle. Her published translations include selected poems of Eeva Liisa Manner in the anthology Female Voices of the North, published by Praesens of Vienna; the graphic novel The Sands of Sarasvati, based on Risto Isomäki’s novel of the same name, translated with Owen Witesman for Tammi of Helsinki; and Purge, by Sofi Oksanen, for Grove/Atlantic.

Read an Excerpt

Grandma doesn’t know Anna’s thoughts. Suddenly, without warning,
she says:
   “I’ve been thinking about you. What’s going on in your life? Or
what was going on, last year, the year before? We didn’t see each other
much. But your mother was worried.” 
   Anna turns her head. It’s easy to turn her head and look at the apple
blossoms, the climbing rose on the side of the house. Soon it, too, will push out buds and everything will start at the beginning again.
Grandma doesn’t give up.
“What exactly happened? What was going on?” Anna reaches for the cheese too quickly. The knife falls to the ground with a clink.
   She’s spilled wine on the dress. One drop of wine dribbles between her thumb and forefinger as if it knows the way. The stain begins to spread over the dress. If she doesn’t put salt on it quickly it will never come out. It will never leave, no matter how much you wash it. It’s already growing.
   “There was something going on for years, wasn’t there?” Grandma asks.
   “Now I’ve ruined this dress,” Anna says, upset.
   She’s still holding her glass. The glass shakes. Grandma is looking closely at her.
   “What of it?” she says. “So what? It’s just a dress.”
   “But it’s yours, and I’ve gone and ruined it. Do you have any salt?
Should I get some from upstairs?”
   Grandma is thoughtful, as if she were looking right through her.
She opens her mouth to say something, closes it again, doesn’t look
away when she finally makes up her mind to say what she’s thinking.
   “Actually, it’s not mine.”

Interviews

A Conversation with Riikka Pulkkinen
What are your thoughts on literature in translation, and how do you feel about being read in the US?
Being translated feels weird. When I read the translation, I almost think: oh, now I'm such a good English speaker! The novel itself feels a bit different when translated. It belongs to readers, not me. But that happens to a novel anyway when it is published. Coming from such a small country as I do, being translated in English is a great opportunity. I get a bit dizzy when thinking about it. People from New York to Seattle can read something that was once just an idea in my mind, not to mention Australia, New Zealand, the places I have never visited. In a way that's the ethical dimension of literature: to be able to reach people through writing, to be able to touch them in that way. It is so great that it's almost difficult to comprehend.
When did you start writing and why?
I started when I was eight. I was playing and I realized that I could play through writing as well. My first "novel" was called "Tessu the Dog," and it was the story of a dog that saved the world. Unfortunately, this piece of art has disappeared but in the beginning, writing was playing, imagining, dreaming. It still has those qualities: playing, imagining, dreaming.
What is your method?
First I come up with philosophical themes. Then I try to figure out the structure. The structure of the novel is really important to me. It has to be like a symphony: every part has to resonate with the others.
And of course the language, which is partly the same as the narrative. I feel like I have to invent language from the beginning every time I start to write a new novel. I ask myself: how do these characters speak, do they speak in the present tense, or in the imperfect? Do they hide something from themselves? The plot is the last thing I figure out. The plot is usually constructing itself until the last minutes of the writing process.
Who are your literary models?
I admire J. M. Coetzee's prose—the structural and philosophical wisdom in his novels. Kazuo Ishiguro has also had a great influence on me. And of course Ian McEwan, especially Atonement. I'm also trying to write as wisely as Jhumpa Lahiri.
I have also read my Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, but it would probably be too much to say that they have influenced my work. And then there's philosophy. I have studied for many years, and find many philosophers are my literary models.
To what extent is True drawn from personal experience?
You can say that every novel is all about the writer, but then again, nothing in the novel is autobiographical. I have had my sorrows, but I have never been a seventy-year-old woman dying of cancer, as one of my characters is. I try to integrate my experiences into my writing, but I'm also able to imagine things that haven't happened to me. Well, every writer does, I suppose. One could say that the emotional level of the story and characters is always totally experienced by the author, but the reality of the novel is not. This means that nothing that happens in my novels has happened to me, though I know how experiencing these things would feel.
What inspired you to create the multigenerational scope of True?As a writer I want to have a full view of life. One should not be satisfied with less. As a writer one should always have the courage to ask the biggest questions. That's why I wanted to write through several generations. The young ones do not have the same wisdom that the older ones have—that creates a certain dynamic.
How specific is True to the culture and setting of Finland? Of Europe?
Fiction is always more interesting to me as a writer than being specific about actual events and places. So I wanted to create the fictional-historical, or mythical, world of Finland in the 1960s. I think that the sixties became a myth almost as soon as it was happening, and it was this kind of imaginative history that I wanted to capture.You have been a student of both literature and philosophy. Do any philosophical dilemmas come into play in True?
Of course, there's the huge question of time. I'll never get over it. Time as we experience it, experience as it is narrated through time, through life. I would say that the structure of True is inspired by the Heideggerian concept of time: presence is always complicated, affected by the past and by waiting for the future. This is one of the main themes in True. Why call this novel True?
First I actually thought that it would be called Lie. But then I realized that lying is less interesting than different narrations. We can always tell our lives in so many ways, and what is true is a combination of all of our views. Or perhaps the point is that no combination of different stories is ever as true as love is. This is one of the most important messages in my novel: Only by loving does life become real or true. That's why it is called True.
Who have you discovered lately?
I've just recently read W. G. Sebald's novels, and find Austerlitz to be one of the most amazing books I've ever read. The trauma of World War II, the impossibility of remembering correctly, and the coincidence of time and space—all these are fascinating. Specifically, I loved the way time starts to unfold as if it were a place in the universe when the narrator is willing to look at his past directly, without hesitation.

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews