Nominated for the Nordic Council’s Literature Award 2003

Love, the media and Helsinki

BY MORTEN ABRAHAMSEN

Kjell Westö
Lang
Forum. S

Pirjo Hassinen
Strawberries in November
Otava. FIN

Kjell Westö was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize two years ago for his magnificent novel Faren ved å være Skrake (The danger of being Skrake), an involved story set in Finland – mostly Helsinki – in the 1900s. Helsinki also serves as the setting for his new book, Lang, a classic story about a woman over whom two men – one her old lover and the other a prospective one – fight it out. The reader is soon appraised of the lethal outcome of that contest. The book’s main character, Christian Lang, a famous TV personality and writer, is the one who is drawn into the fateful relationship. As the book starts he asks Konnie, a childhood friend and far less successful writer, to put down on paper the events that led up to the violent outcome. Christian Lang has been exasperatingly successful all his life. When we meet him, however, his star has begun to wane slightly. He is getting on for forty and the public are showing signs of satiety. His television career seems increasingly to be heading nowhere, and he hasn’t written a book for ages.

Passionate
The idea of two men fighting over a woman is not an original plot by any stretch of the imagination, but the twist Westö gives it by letting Lang’s colleague write the story is not inelegant. Because despite their lifelong friendship, unresolved issues remain between them. Can we trust what Lang dictates? And can we be sure that Konnie really wants the truth to be told?
The book is mesmerising and intense, with the atmosphere of Helsiniki’s streets, colours and smells as an ever-present backdrop.
Lang works in several respects, as a thriller, a commentary on the media’s celebrity cult and, not least, as a stylistically assured twist to an archetypal theme. It is a riveting book that maintains the tension as new aspects of Christian Lang’s life come to light. It is also a clever book, easy to be gripped by, but it never completely manages to conceal the fact that it is basically about a well-tried theme with expected results.

Limelight
The celebrity element places a central role in Pirjo Hassinen’s Jordgubbar i november (Strawberries in November) as well. The first-person narrator Anna has one task in life, to turn her boyfriend Lasse into a super star. We follow the couple from their early student days and through the following decade. Anna has no wish to share in the limelight, but her ambitions for Lasse are vast. He is a promising actor who, as if controlled from a distance by Anna, slowly but surely becomes the darling of the tabloids.
He is more than willing to let himself be led as her plans grow increasingly devious and convoluted by the minute. The play of power between them resembles a sophisticated sex game in which he subjects himself to her will without doubt or reservation.
The plot draws the reader into the world of acting, populated by strange though strong characters, each fighting to achieve or retain their positions. And as long as art is involved, practically anything goes. A corpse or two is of no consequence to secure critical success. The descriptions of the many ins and outs of life in the theatre are interesting to a point, but the number of plays we are treated to as Lasse ascends to the firmament does become slightly tedious. A burning interest in the theatre on the part of the reader would help, but lacking that the book does become slightly repetitive.

Controlled
Anyway, Anna gets her way. That is, until Lasse grows tired of her and wants to start managing his own affairs. Too long has he been a puppet of his surroundings, and when he discovers the fun of constant media attention there is little Anna can do.
Hassinen turns traditional sex roles on their head, and it is Anna who behaves in ways generally associated with the male gender.
Another thing: all the characters are pretty low on empathy. Even the relationship between Anna and Lasse tends to feel slightly contrived and forced. The plot’s culmination occurs when everything escapes from this pre-programmed reality. At which point Anna is corporeally and psychologically relegated to the sidelines. Jordgubbar i november is a sensual book which takes gender roles and ruthless ambition by the scruff of the neck.

Morten Abrahamsen is a writer and cultural journalist

Translated by Chris Saunders