Popular Music from Vittula: A Novel - Hardcover

Niemi, Mikael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1583225234 ISBN 13: 9781583225233

Publisher: Seven Stories Press, 2003

Synopsis

Popular Music from Vittula tells the fantastical story of a young boy's unordinary existence, peopled by a visiting African priest, a witch in the heart of the forest, cousins from Missouri, an old Nazi, a beautiful girl with a black Volvo, silent men and tough women, a champion-bicyclist music teacher with a thumb in the middle of his hand—and, not least, on a shiny vinyl disk, the Beatles.
The story unfolds in sweltering wood saunas, amidst chain thrashings and gang warfare, learning to play the guitar in the garage, over a traditional wedding meal, on the way to China, during drinking competitions, while learning secret languages, playing ice hockey surrounded by snow drifts, outsmarting mice, discovering girls, staging a first rock concert, peeing in the snow, skiing under a sparkling midnight sky. In the manner of David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green, Mikael Niemi tells a story of a rural Sweden at once foreign and familiar, as a magical childhood slowly fades with the seasons into adult reality.

About this title

About the Author

MIKAEL NIEMI was born in 1959 and grew up in Pajala in the northernmost part of Sweden, near the Finnish border, where he still lives. He is the author of several books of poetry and fiction for both young people and adults.

Reviews

When a Beatles record falls into the hands of 11-year-old Matti, neither he nor his home village of Pajala, Sweden, will ever be the same. It is the early 1960s, and both Matti and Pajala are about to enter adolescence. This is a beautiful, poignant, often very funny novel about growing up in a remote area. Niemi writes with real poetry as he strings together the culturally rich vignettes of Matti's experiences, snapshots of childhood that are at the same time intensely personal and universal: the burn of the first alcoholic drink, the thrill of a first kiss, the awe of first sex, the special closeness of a first best friend, the pain of the first real loss--all rendered pure and convincingly as a young boy's perceptions. Niemi also seasons the book well with the mysticism of childhood that suffuses the usually hidden psychological space where the transformation from child to youth occurs. An exquisitely beautiful novel, artfully translated. Paula Luedtke
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Edition details

• Publisher: Seven Stories Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1583225234
• ISBN 13: 9781583225233
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240