(book review)

This is not exactly a Ukrainian book, but it is a book translated into Ukrainian. I hope that won’t be a problem.

In fact, I had not heard much about this book, so at first I had no idea what it might contain. I came across it among others on the page of the online bookstore and the cover caught my attention. Simple, but at the same time splendid and later it turned out to be symbolic. It was very clever to draw thirteen fir trees on the cover of a book called ‘Thirteen Novels,’ wasn’t it? But it turned out already when the book came to me.

The second thing that caught my attention was the author. Jyrki Vaikonen, the truest Finn! Recently (for two years now, oh my God, “recently”) I have got interested in Finland and Finnish culture, so seeing with my own eyes what they can write was one of the motivations for me to buy this book.

The third lever in the direction of the purchase was the passage demonstrated on the website. Although in some places it is a little, as they say, “with pepper,” I liked the writing style, the translation of the works itself (by Yuriy Zub, by the way; a Ukrainian who went to Finland to study it and after some time released the Finnish-Ukrainian dictionary, the most complete of its kind) and the sudden absurdity of history. Some scientist, a fishing rod, an encyclopedia… And he ended up in his wife’s thigh. And even managed to research something there!

Therefore, I sat and waited for the right moment when I could order the book from the site and get it for myself. After that, I couldn’t understand for a long time whether I wanted it or not, because at that time there was a small problem with money and spending it on something unknown, which you don’t even know about… But because of that passage and its easy reading, I still dared order. And I wasn’t mistaken.

Among the advantages of the book, I would like to note the variety of stories, hard binding (nice to the touch), and small size. You can take it with you for a walk.

The minus of the book (and the plus at the same time) is that you should sit quietly and immerse yourself in what you read, because what is described there does not quite fit into your head, starting from the same trip on the hip and ending with a chatty mannequin in a clothing store. The author says that his dreams are described there, and only this, one might say, calms me down. These stories are really easier to perceive than a dream; so it is easier to imagine them. The book evokes two feelings.

The main thing is not to read all the stories at once; otherwise, everything will get mixed up in your head. They are enough… Chimera…Here there is also a chimera on the top of a chimera. It will become even more incomprehensible, and from then on, boring, so my advice to you: read no more than one story a day from there. If you can really absorb completely different stories in a short time, then no more than two a day, because if more, it will just get boring. There are only thirteen of them there anyway. In my opinion, another minus: there are few stories, but these are my jokes.

I give this book 10/10. It did not disappoint me.