The Logbook of Love

What’s love all about? In Elina Hirvonen´s new novel, The Logbook of Love, conversations about love form a sea of connections among people from wildly different backgrounds and places.

What’s love all about?

”That fall, I fear that depression will take away my ability to search for meanings and I can no longer write. If I lose the written words, what am I left with? I try to find something that feels important. The word love is drawn to my mind. I wonder: could I ward off my dark thoughts by writing about love? What could love be in this world?”

The narrator tries to fight the darkness from taking over her mind by writing down people's stories of love. In Helsinki, a city silenced by a global emergency, she walks through the empty streets as her thoughts journey through time and space. She meets with friends and strangers, moves between the past and the present, shifts from country to country. Everywhere she goes, she talks with others about love: romantic love, the love for justice and human rights, marital love, the love of parents for children, the love that can bind friends from different cultures and backgrounds – and the love that, no matter how powerful it is, sometimes fails to bridge the gaps between people. The individuals she encounters, and the love stories they tell, leave their mark on the narrator. Her reflections on what she has heard and experienced portray a world that’s heating up too quickly as it slips into conflict and violence, but where everyone still continues to search for meaning, hope and joy.

In her unique Finnish voice, Elina Hirvonen has written a heartfelt and unforgettable novel about everything we love. The Logbook of Love is the first part of a trilogy of novels that create their world through conversations.