Moomintroll this is not!, 5 Sep 2003

Reading this book was a strange pleasure, strongly evocative of Finnish nature and a particularly Finnish relationship to the natural world. Although the events of the book take place in a city, and many of them indoors, the presence of Pessi the troll, and the constant references to the wild forests outside remind us that even the most 'civilised' parts of human life are rooted in wild nature. And in Mikael's living room is a troll who he feeds sometimes with cat food, sometimes with rodents from the pet shop.... Trolls are related to cats (apparently!), so sometimes Pessi sits and sleeps; other times, he delights in the hunt, with messy (and lethal) consequences.

Particularly fun in this book is that each chapter has a heading which tells you who the narrator is --- and it's never Pessi. But interspersed with the narrative are extracts of texts about trolls. Are these texts 'real'? Some of the titles and authors are well known in Finland, which makes the part about the magical/troll world and the human world more believable.

This is a book that is easy and very enjoyable to read (despite some clumsy bits of translation now and again), but I have to admit that at the end I wasn't sure it was as 'deep' as the blurb on the back cover says; on the other hand, that was one thing that made me want to go back and read parts of it again.

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