Inspired in part by Enid Blyton's child adventurers, a Finnish five had adventures of their own in the Tourula district of Jyväskylä, back in the 1970s: Olli, Leo, Riku, Anna and Karri. They had a dog, too, Timi, though no one can remember what happened to him. They caught a burglar and appeared in the newspaper. Decades later, Olli Suominen has gone on to be a reasonably well-off publisher. But he's disaffected with his life, loses a remarkable number of umbrellas, and struggles to sleep because the angles in his house aren't quite right.
In bed with his wife Aino, he thinks that "the longer people are together, the more they become strangers to one another". He hardly seems to care about her – but then, he reflects, she can't even tell the difference between a good photograph and a bad photograph! – or his son either. He wants to be torn away from his life and diagnoses himself as being afflicted with "slow continuum attachment". Also, he could really do with a hit non-fiction book to keep the company going.
All of this leads him to reconnect on Facebook with an old friend, Greta Kara, now famous as the glamorous author of A Guide to the Cinematic Life, which has started a national craze for speaking, dressing and behaving cinematically. (It's been interesting since reading this novel to see similar books in the real world, like What Would Audrey Do? by Pamela Keogh, though fortunately people aren't taking them quite so seriously.) According to Greta, some places radiate meaningfulness particles; they are inherently cinematic; they activate the inner filmic self. This is perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the book.
Olli hopes to leverage his connection with Greta to poach her from her existing publisher, and as luck would have it she is quite fed up with them, and ready to give up her expenses-paid apartment in Paris to come and write a book in and about Jyväskylä. Greta believes her home town to be especially rich in what she calls M-particles: it's full of "magical, out-of-the-ordinary places where the atmosphere is especially concentrated, where life feels more meaningful".
As their new, unprofessional relationship clumsily progresses, other old friends return to Olli's life to complicate matters, as do his memories of their half-forgotten childhood adventures, at least when he is dreaming. He even remembers the secret passages that they would use to get around the town, and how moody little Karri, apparently sensitive to M-particles, could sense the tunnel entrances and lead the children safely through to their adventures.
Translated from the Finnish by Lola Rogers, this was published with the financial assistance of the Finnish Literature Exchange, which is clearly doing very welcome work. The original was published in 2010 (as by Atena Kustannus), which may explain it seeing Facebook as quite the novelty. The site may have lost that allure, but the book's depiction of it still rings true, in particular the temptation to look up old friends, lovers and enemies. The book shows such nostalgia as a sickness, and yet also as a means to find our way back to who we wanted to be in the first place.
The Rabbit-Back Literature Society by the same author was reviewed positively in Interzone #250, and this one again will appeal to readers with an interest in the lives of authors, and the nature of creative inspiration. Some readers may see later developments in the plot as exploitative of their identities, but I think its heart is full of empathy and very much in the right place. For a book that starts very slow it packs in plenty of plot by the end. It's often moving, and at times upsetting, and I couldn't help admiring (from a safe distance) its call to live our lives romantically and with commitment. That's the thing with Olli, he doesn't commit to the life he has chosen, and so every minute of it seems like a chore.
Science fiction and fantasy readers may come away wishing that there was more exploration – literally! – of the secret passages of the title, or of the social consequences of a transformative craze sweeping the country, but I think they will still enjoy it. Olli is a frustrating man to read about, but the book doesn't ask us to admire him, and it's interesting to read a fantasy novel which focuses on the mystery of childhood amnesia: we forget so much of our earliest years, and this book asks us to consider just what we might have lost. Stephen Theaker ***
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