Secret Passages in a Hillside Town: WLT review
What a string of comparisons Lanie Tankard puts together in her review of Secret Passages in a Hillside Town, the crazy brilliant novel by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen (translated by yours truly).
“On the surface, the book is an amusing story of a grumpy man’s midlife crisis å la Fredrik Backman’s Ove. On another level, the novel’s a lurking childhood mystery in the style of Per Petterson’s I Refuse. Look again, it’s an exploration of memories reminiscent of Haruki Murakami’s Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki. Go deeper for a psychological examination of gender harking back to Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. Crawl far enough into the warren maze of Jääskeläinen’s plot and uncover a parody of data analytics, Facebook, cinema, and book publishing echoing the best of William Gibson-with a touch of Anais Nin.”
World Literature Today, Winter 2019
I haven’t read all the books she mentions, but I agree that Secret Passages is weird and wonderful.
