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Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto is a beautiful, terribly sad novel I reviewed at TONY. You should read it now, when the weather is beautiful and springy and you will be less likely to dip into depression.
“Finland is a place where “quiet and routine settle even more firmly with the snow,” and the book’s subtle, slow accrual of moodiness and dark humor feeds the smoldering ambiance. Maile Chapman’s precise, controlled language captures the crushing monotony of hospital life (the dispensing of medications, the saturated dressings that must be changed at intervals, the log where every action is to be recorded), and these repetitions contribute to a sense of constricting, institutionalized doom. Not since the Overlook Hotel has a place so enormous felt so claustrophobic.”
