Thursday, February 3, 2011

The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna

The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna
208 pages
First published 1975, published December 2010 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher

Kaarlo Vatanen, Finnish journalist, and his photographer are headed by to Helsinki late one day when they accidentally hit a hare, injuring it.  Vatanen goes off in pursuit of the hare and  when he doesn't quickly return, the photographer leaves without him.  By the time the night has passed, Vatanen has made the decision that he will not be returning to life as he has known it.
"Early in his marriage his wife had single-mindedly set out to assemble a common domicile, a home. Their apartment had become an extravagant farrago of shallow and meretricious interior-decoration tips from women's magazines.  A pseudo-radicalism governed the design, with huge posters and clumsy modular furniture.  It was difficult to inhabit the rooms without injury; all the items were at odds.  The home was distinctly reminiscent of Vatanen's marriage."
Vatanen makes the decision that he is no longer content to just exist but really wants to enjoy his life.  So, taking odd jobs to support himself, Vatanen and the hare, make their way across the country.  Along the way, they meet an assortment of people, some very kind but so many more who are thoughtless and cruel.  It's truly a sign of happiness that Vatanen finds in this new life that despite all of the terrible people that he meets and all of the bureaucracy that he encounters, the book is filled with humor and never feels heavy.  The hare helps.  Seriously.  Vatanen is sleeping in a church when the minister comes in and finds the hare, who has left pellets, if you will, at the altar.  Incensed, the minister begins chasing the hare all over the church, even begins firing a pistol at it, eventually shooting himself in the foot.

Vatanen is no saint.  Besides walking out on his wife (okay, she was really no prize), when Vatanen volunteers to help scare the animals out of a forest and alert the humans in the path of a forest fire, he comes across a drunk and the two become so drunk they are unable to flee.  Another time he is purposely cruel to a raven, fixing a can of meat so that the raven's head becomes trapped in the can.
"There was more raven's blood in the tin than meat, he knew, and there was enough cruelty in him to laugh out loud at his foul play."
Publisher's Weekly calls it "baldly obvious in the way that parables often are."  To some extent that is true and yet I was often surprised by the story.  I'm a little surprised to find that this book is so popular world-wide, though.  Perhaps it's the spare translation, but I felt the story was  light and didn't pull me in; I found myself more curious to see what might happen next than particularly caring what happened to Vartanen himself.

Still it was an enjoyable journey and I'm glad that I read it as part of my effort to read more works by non-U.S. writers.

9 comments:

  1. The book may be different but I don't like the part of cruelty to the bird.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I had not heard of this book, and it sounds rather unusual. I like those types of books, and may want to check this one out. It sounds like you didn't totally connect with this one, but I'd be interested in reading it and comparing our reactions.

    ReplyDelete
  3. this one does sound interesting and I think it's great that you're expanding your reading!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sounds like an interesting book. I need to expand my own horizons.

    ReplyDelete
  5. What a timely book and read - did you do that on purpose? :-)

    I love the cover art on this book.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Was there much dialogue and do you think it's typically Finnish? I haven't read much Scandinavian writing except some crime novels.

    ReplyDelete
  7. There wasn't a lot of dialogue. I don't recall ever reading anything Finnish before so I can't say if it's typical. Which is one of the things that makes me sure that I need to become more widely read!

    ReplyDelete
  8. At first the premise sounded promising and I immediately thought about your quest to read more non-US authors! But too bad it fell a little flat for you. Sometimes I wonder if translation has any play in how much I enjoy a book but in most cases I'll never know!

    ReplyDelete
  9. This one's new to me. I do think parables are usually obvious and predictable and that's probably why it didn't pull you in. I just love that cover!

    ReplyDelete