Words For Wednesday

Today’s words come from Purge by Sofi Oksanen, a Finnish-Estonian writer. Purge is her third novel – the first to be translated into English – and is an adaptation of her play by the same name. Purge is the story of two women. Aliide lives in a dying village in the Estonian countryside and has lived through the war and the soviet occupation of her country. Zara is a young girl, clearly in some sort of trouble and has ended up in a miserable heap in Aliide’s yard. This novel is the story of the two women and the variety of threads that connect them to each other. It is a spectacular novel and Oksanen has won just about every prize for Purge that it is eligible for including being the first person to win the Finlandia Prize and the Runeberg Prize for the same work. She has also won the European Book Prize and the Nordic Council Literature Prize. The work is definitely worthy of a wider audience in the United States. Note: This novel a major aspect of this novel is about the sexual degradation and abuse that women can suffer from and the author does not shy away from description. However, the verbiage is not gratuitous and the author treats her characters with a tremendous amount of respect.

But the girl was so clearly terrified that suddenly Aliide was too. Good God, how her body remembered that feeling, remembered it so well that she caught the feeling as soon as she saw it in a stranger’s eyes. And what if the girl was right? What if there was a good reason to fear what she feared? What if that was her husband? Aliide’s ability to fear was something that should have belonged in the past. She had left it behind her and hadn’t built it up again from the rock throwers at all. But now, when an unknown girl was in her kitchen spreading fear from her bare skin onto Aliide’s oilcloth, she couldn’t brush it away like she ought to have done. Instead it seeped in between the wallpaper and the old wallpaper paste, into the gaps left behind by the photographs that she had hidden there and later destroyed. The fear settled in as though it felt at home. As though it would never go away. As though it had just been put somewhere for a while and had come home for the evening. (pg. 79)

Note:  a major aspect of this novel is about the sexual degradation and abuse that women can suffer from and the author does not shy away from description. However, the verbiage is not gratuitous and the author treats her characters with a tremendous amount of respect.