True

Posted on 17.02.2023

An addressing novel about the deceptiveness of memory, the mercy of a lie, and love

Elsa is dying. Her husband Martti and daughter Eleonoora are struggling to accept the crushing thought that they are soon to lose her. As Elsa becomes ever more fragile, Eleonoora’s childhood memories are slipping away.

Meanwhile, Eleonoora’s daughter Anna spends her time pondering the fates of passersby. For her, the world is full of stories. But the story that will change her forever is the one about Eeva, her mother’s nanny, whom her grandparents have been silent about for years.

Eeva’s forgotten story, which Anna first learns of when she discovers an old dress of Eeva’s, is finally revealed layer by layer. The tale that unfolds is about a mother and daughter, about how memory can deceive us – and sometimes that is the most merciful thing that can happen.

The Limit

Posted on 17.02.2023

It’s a sweltering summer’s day, and Anja Aropalo is on her way home with two errands in mind: first, to water the roses, and then to commit suicide. She is slowly losing her husband to Alzheimer’s disease, and she has made him a terrible promise — one she’s not sure she can keep.

For Anja’s niece, Mari, death is a teenage fantasy of grieving family and eternal beauty, an escape from the dullness of her life. But the adventure she longs for seems to come within reach when she begins a relationship with her charismatic teacher, Julian. His six-year-old daughter, Anni, is a witness to their blossoming affair, observing the lies and truths of those around her as she tries to discover what it is to be an adult.

The Limit draws together these four people, all struggling to work out where their boundaries lie. In vivid, incandescent prose, Riikka Pulkkinen reveals how our limits can show us who we really are.

The Enchantment

Posted on 15.02.2023

This shiningly beautiful novel is an autopsy of girlhood and power

Philippa Laakso, aged seventeen, is found dead in her yard at home. Nothing suggests a crime, and everyone who knew her is certain she wasn’t suicidal. On the other hand, all who knew her seem to hold a differing view of her. The investigation sees them being interviewed, but behind every view and story is Philippa’s influence. She still has the people around her in a sharp grip: her friend, ex-boyfriend, teacher, neighbors.

Riikka Pulkkinen’s anticipated novel examines the power and comfort of make-believe and the thin line between love and play. Every character in the novel sees Philippa in his or her own way, as a mirror for fantasizing, anger, aspirations, comfort, and freedom, and uses their perceived image of Philippa to their own ends.

Riikka Pulkkinen is a Finnish Joyce Carol Oates.
– Livres Hebdo, France

Riikka Pulkkinen

Posted on 09.08.202214.09.2023

Riikka Pulkkinen (b. 1980) is one of the top names in Finnish literature. Her debut novel The Limit (2006) gained wide attention, was a bestseller, and was adapted into a play and a TV series in Finland. Her international breakthrough came with her second novel, True (2010), which was the one novel everyone was talking about that year at the Frankfurt book fair. The novel has been published in 17 countries to date.

Pulkkinen’s novels are characterized by the precision with which she describes the psychology of the characters, and the philosophical themes that reflect from the characters into the refined structure of the novels and culminate on the level of the plot. The main questions she explores in her novels concern power, responsibility, and justice.

Pulkkinen has an M.A. in Literary Studies from the University of Helsinki, and she lives in Helsinki with her husband and her two children. She enjoys dancing and running in the forest or by the seaside. If she weren’t a writer, she would be a psychologist or a baker.

For her works, Riikka Pulkkinen has received the Kaarle award in 2007, the Laila Hirvisaari Fund stipend in 2007, the Veijo Meri Award in 2019, and her novel True was nominated for the Finlandia Prize in 2010.