...Sirre was the object of anticipation. To the others the news of a mother’s arrival was not important, but to Sirre it was: that someone called her Mummy. They both called her that: Vita and Assar. Sometimes she thought she was a mother to them both, but then she wanted quickly to forget about that idea, searched for the rouge and concealer pen in the make-up bag and compared himself to the other South Helsinki mothers. She could almost keep up with them.
Sirre tried hard. She did gym exercises, yoga. She took courses in Japanese flower arrangement and studied critical thinking at the Institute. She didn’t talk about her private life and didn’t ask other people about theirs. She tried to attain peace of mind and did concentration exercises when she was alone. She controlled her moods and hid her disappointments. The only matters she ever interfered in were connected with the activities of the maintenance man, and she often checked the time he began to sweep the courtyard in the morning. The noise woke Vita up too early, and Sirre went down to tell the man not to start work in their block before seven.
Clear-eyed, trusting Vita. She was straight as a pole, and taller than the other children of her age. She had her father’s strong bones and thick reddish hair. She was still a little unsure, in search of herself, but Sirre hoped that later on she would become conscious of her strength.
Mummy looked like a cartoon clown. Mummy stood on the edge of the playground looking spare. Mummy was useless. Mummy made Vita laugh. Her friends, too, some of them. Mummy was embarrassing. She really did look embarrassing as she stood there under the guttering. Water was dripping on Mummy’s head. Mummy didn’t notice it. Mummy had a fur hat on. Mummy looked like a new girl. Yes. She looked like a new girl and no one wanted to play with her. Embarrassing. Mummy probably had a bar of chocolate in her pocket. Or chewing gum at least. Vita wanted something sweet. Mummy gave her sweets.
A child's life ought to be secure and clearly marked out. Sirre hugged Vita, that children’s world with all its details, in which she was involved: the winter coat that smelt of frost, the addition and subtraction sums, the school class sizes, the pencils with horses on them, the magnetic pencil box, the baggy rucksack, the gym shoes, the bedtimes, the mini-cartons of fruit juice, the Japanese children’s movies, the playtimes. Vita put her hand in Sirre’s coat pocket. Sirre said no. Vita found a stick of chewing gum.
translated from Finnish by David McDuff
Housewife
Houswife - 1
Housewife - 2
Showing posts with label Kreetta Onkeli. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kreetta Onkeli. Show all posts
Tuesday, 8 September 2009
Tuesday, 25 August 2009
Kreetta Onkeli: Housewife - 2
It was half past eleven. Sirre fetched a microfibre cloth from the utility room and wiped the dust from the small bronze sculptures she had bought from Galleria Sculptor. She did not know who the young Finnish sculptor was who had made them, but as abstracts they went well with the broad and simple window ledges, and they induced one to imagine what they represented. They were surprisingly heavy. For some reason Sirre had initially avoided art galleries, in her memory there was some trauma connected with art, and in her new life she did not feel like thinking about it. Now she experienced art in terms of its surface, superficially. She wasn’t interested in the person who had made it, just as she didn’t give a damn about who had designed the dining room furniture or the ceiling lamp. She decided to go and have lunch at the Nepalese place. It was a small and cosy restaurant. Its lunchtime clientele included civil servants, graphic designers, people in the film industry, architects. The calm buzz of voices reminded her of a wasps’ nest at night. These people knew how to hang together. They ate in a leisurely fashion. Their lunchtime was a different affair from the hour-long lunch break at the hospital, where the staff ate film-wrapped sandwiches as they ran from one ward to the other. A jangling, discordant tape recording droned away behind the Finnish consensus. As she picked at the rice with her fork Sirre felt lonely. Which group did she belong to? Housewives didn't have a union. Assar was hardly ever away from his job. Vita was in fourth grade at school. Dear Vita! Sirre would give her a surprise and fetch her straight from school. Vita wouldn’t have to go to her extra afternoon class. It was wonderful – she was so lucky to have a child. At the same time she remembered that Assar was still unwilling to sign the adoption papers that would make Vita her own. Sirre drank two glasses of water. She had a moral responsibility to take care of Vita. She was Vita’s mother in a practical and ethical sense, and she must not think about side issues. Sirre left the rice uneaten, as was nowadays advised. She would leave the restaurant, go to the school, quick quick, before Vita had time to start playing in the playground with the other children.
Behind the old prison the children’s shouts rose in the air like the snowballs. The junior school was in red-brick building that also housed the kindergarten and the sports hall. Inside, the premises which had been reconditioned from an old turbine factory were white and high-ceilinged, enlivened on the outside by the original dark red brick wall. The old decommissioned chimneystack rose from the schoolyard like a tower erected in honour of learning. In this part of town the children were red-cheeked and warmly dressed. She did not see a child left out of games, or kicking the ice alone in a corner. The girls were prettily dressed, their long tresses tied up in pigtails. The pigtails reached far down their backs. Vita’s jacket was covered in black and wine-red squares.
Sirre stood outside the school to wait. She expected that Vita would come running to her as soon as she saw her. Vita said goodbye to her friends and ran to hug her.
“Mummy’s here! My Mummy’s here!” she cried.
Housewife
Housewife - 1
Behind the old prison the children’s shouts rose in the air like the snowballs. The junior school was in red-brick building that also housed the kindergarten and the sports hall. Inside, the premises which had been reconditioned from an old turbine factory were white and high-ceilinged, enlivened on the outside by the original dark red brick wall. The old decommissioned chimneystack rose from the schoolyard like a tower erected in honour of learning. In this part of town the children were red-cheeked and warmly dressed. She did not see a child left out of games, or kicking the ice alone in a corner. The girls were prettily dressed, their long tresses tied up in pigtails. The pigtails reached far down their backs. Vita’s jacket was covered in black and wine-red squares.
Sirre stood outside the school to wait. She expected that Vita would come running to her as soon as she saw her. Vita said goodbye to her friends and ran to hug her.
“Mummy’s here! My Mummy’s here!” she cried.
Housewife
Housewife - 1
Monday, 24 August 2009
Kreetta Onkeli: Housewife - 1
Some excerpts from the novel:
11.
How long have they lived there? One and a half years? Two? Her job as a housewife is the longest one she has ever had. They have adapted. They live in a spacious apartment. The ceilings in the stone building are up to four metres high. There are so many rooms that they haven’t enough furniture for them all. Assar bought the apartment with shares. Sirre doesn’t know what kind of shares they were, and has never even asked him, because she was more interested in the bathroom tiles than the source of the money. She couldn’t choose between dark blue tiles and dark green tiles. At any rate the bathroom would look new. Assar could see nothing wrong with white tiling and cute oval-shaped wash basins with two faucets. The bathroom is very important for a woman, and Sirre didn’t want to wash, scrub and oil herself in an ordinary bathroom of the kind you might find in Hakaniemi. Only Italian or Spanish tiles would do, and a pure-style wash basin with automatic faucets. As she thought about the bathroom next to an enormous pile of product catalogues, it occurred to her that a single brown-coloured painting would be an original choice for the door of the WC. She remembered seeing a painting that would be suitable. She didn’t think she had painted it herself. Assar would hardly object. He had promised Sirre a home. Sirre’s home was her office. That was how she thought of it. Sirre was responsible for all of the choices in the home that affected interior decoration and the feeding and clothing of the family. In the kitchen she made a cup of cappuccino.
She found a quiet life satisfying. Every woman needs a family. Assar and Vita had made her complete. She caressed the Kitchen-Aid blender and sat down on the broad ledge below the window. What was missing was a view of the sea. One and a half meters away was the wall of the office employees. It looked like something out of a social realist East German Advent calendar. It had little square compartments with dangling blinds, and poor-postured fluffy-looking females in knitted cardigans stuck bright yellow post-it notes on the wall’s free surface area. The office workers’ slavishness emphasized Sirre’s privileged lot. Sirre turned her back on them. Fortunately the apartment had lots of space. Through the living room another living room opened up on the horizon, behind it were Vita’s room, the office where Sirre sorted her interior design magazines and cookbooks, the utility room, the bedroom, the library and the guest room, as well as some other silly little rooms that were full of nooks and crannies and were all that people could think of building a hundred years ago. They were wonderful places for storing rowing machines, exercycles and steppers, she thought, affectedly, as if she were Louis XII.
Sirre was a lucky woman. She put her cup back in its saucer on the window ledge, got out the yoga mat and began to do stretching exercises in the living room, which in its half-furnished state looked like Maya Plisetskaya’s dance class. Sirre saw himself in a black tights and a black gym top, straight-necked and upright, a smile on her lips even though the stretching was making her muscles ache.
translated from Finnish by David McDuff
11.
How long have they lived there? One and a half years? Two? Her job as a housewife is the longest one she has ever had. They have adapted. They live in a spacious apartment. The ceilings in the stone building are up to four metres high. There are so many rooms that they haven’t enough furniture for them all. Assar bought the apartment with shares. Sirre doesn’t know what kind of shares they were, and has never even asked him, because she was more interested in the bathroom tiles than the source of the money. She couldn’t choose between dark blue tiles and dark green tiles. At any rate the bathroom would look new. Assar could see nothing wrong with white tiling and cute oval-shaped wash basins with two faucets. The bathroom is very important for a woman, and Sirre didn’t want to wash, scrub and oil herself in an ordinary bathroom of the kind you might find in Hakaniemi. Only Italian or Spanish tiles would do, and a pure-style wash basin with automatic faucets. As she thought about the bathroom next to an enormous pile of product catalogues, it occurred to her that a single brown-coloured painting would be an original choice for the door of the WC. She remembered seeing a painting that would be suitable. She didn’t think she had painted it herself. Assar would hardly object. He had promised Sirre a home. Sirre’s home was her office. That was how she thought of it. Sirre was responsible for all of the choices in the home that affected interior decoration and the feeding and clothing of the family. In the kitchen she made a cup of cappuccino.
She found a quiet life satisfying. Every woman needs a family. Assar and Vita had made her complete. She caressed the Kitchen-Aid blender and sat down on the broad ledge below the window. What was missing was a view of the sea. One and a half meters away was the wall of the office employees. It looked like something out of a social realist East German Advent calendar. It had little square compartments with dangling blinds, and poor-postured fluffy-looking females in knitted cardigans stuck bright yellow post-it notes on the wall’s free surface area. The office workers’ slavishness emphasized Sirre’s privileged lot. Sirre turned her back on them. Fortunately the apartment had lots of space. Through the living room another living room opened up on the horizon, behind it were Vita’s room, the office where Sirre sorted her interior design magazines and cookbooks, the utility room, the bedroom, the library and the guest room, as well as some other silly little rooms that were full of nooks and crannies and were all that people could think of building a hundred years ago. They were wonderful places for storing rowing machines, exercycles and steppers, she thought, affectedly, as if she were Louis XII.
Sirre was a lucky woman. She put her cup back in its saucer on the window ledge, got out the yoga mat and began to do stretching exercises in the living room, which in its half-furnished state looked like Maya Plisetskaya’s dance class. Sirre saw himself in a black tights and a black gym top, straight-necked and upright, a smile on her lips even though the stretching was making her muscles ache.
translated from Finnish by David McDuff
Saturday, 22 August 2009
Housewife
Here's the text of a recent review. The book concerned is Kreetta Onkeli's Kotirouva (Sammakko, 2007, 224 pp.):
The author describes her book as a rakkausromaani, or romance novel, but it is really a sardonic and realistic portrayal of an artificial relationship that eventually breaks down under the psychological pressure and need for authenticity that are experienced by the central character. It is Kreetta Onkeli’s third novel, and it represents a significant evolution of her earlier style.
Sirre Määttänen is a 30-year-old hospital cleaner who lives alone in a one-roomed apartment in Helsinki. Behind her she has a career as an artist and painter, but has given it up, just as she has given up her dreams of finding a suitable partner and starting a family. At this low point in her life she encounters a lost child who turns out to be the daughter of a businessman, Assar Elo, who is looking for a woman to run the domestic side of his life for him. Sirre exchanges her hospital job for a new one as a housewife – she sees the relationship in practical terms, as a form of employment and a way to realize her dreams of a family.
The new “job” is not without its complexities, however. Sirre, who has now acquired financial security but is also financially dependent on her husband, settles down to the task of creating a family home in the expensive and spacious apartment Assar has bought. She immerses herself in glossy interior design magazines and becomes an expert on the latest consumer fashions, organizing the redecoration. At the same time she has to live with Assar and Vita – something of a challenge, as Assar is a dominating and aggressive male chauvinist who spends most of his time at the office but expects his home and wife to be ready for him when he returns, and Vita an uncertain and selfish pre-teen with a growing array of needs and problems that require constant attention. Quarrels are a regular occurrence, yet Sirre wants to make a success of Vita, seeing her as the daughter she never had, and wants to give her everything — too much, in fact.
Sirre’s old watercolour paintings are stored in a furniture warehouse, and Assar has the idea that they can be used to make money, by creating a series of postcards. But the paintings turn out not to be suitable for the postcard project, and so they are destroyed, in order to save money on the storage costs. Sirre’s life develops into a kind of nightmare, as physical demands are compounded with emotional ones to create a prison-like net of limitations and constraints which prevent her from living her own life as an individual. Yet even though she has possibilities, she doesn’t make use of them. Years earlier, she painted a watercolour on the theme of cancer which became nationally known, and the city’s cancer relief foundation wants her to deliver a talk about her painting. Yet she turns the offer down, and when eventually she tries to break out of the net by returning to work as a cleaner at the foundation’s office, the director recognizes her – her painting is hanging there in a special ceremonial spot.
Sirre does everything to close off the avenues that might bring her the opportunity of fulfilment, yet the new life she has chosen is even more restrictive. Assar and Vita are completely absorbed in the problems of their own personal development, and Sirre gives her life to two people who are incapable of valuing it. In the end, as Assar is openly unfaithful with other women and Vita becomes increasingly sulky and withdrawn, Sirre is returned to herself, alone.
The style of the book is laconic, and the sentences are either short in themselves or built from short phrases which give an impression of breathlessness and stress. Although the description is vividly realistic, reproducing many facets of the visual and tactile reality of life in a big city, it is also characterized by an element of otherness and alienation: familiar scenes and places are presented in terms that make them seem strange and almost other-worldly. This effect is linked to Sirre’s growing sense of estrangement from herself, as she grapples with the impossible task of living the life of a traditional “housewife” – a role which in contemporary society has become obsolete and no longer offers a viable route for women who seek identity and self-esteem. At the end of the novel, Sirre remains an enigma, both to herself and to the reader.
Kreetta Onkeli doesn't judge her characters, but presents them as they are, with their conflicts and personal flaws and problems: her criticism is reserved for a social environment that is perceived as hostile to individual aspirations and genuine human development. This portrayal of life in a big city would be understood anywhere in Europe or North America today.
David McDuff
The author describes her book as a rakkausromaani, or romance novel, but it is really a sardonic and realistic portrayal of an artificial relationship that eventually breaks down under the psychological pressure and need for authenticity that are experienced by the central character. It is Kreetta Onkeli’s third novel, and it represents a significant evolution of her earlier style.
Sirre Määttänen is a 30-year-old hospital cleaner who lives alone in a one-roomed apartment in Helsinki. Behind her she has a career as an artist and painter, but has given it up, just as she has given up her dreams of finding a suitable partner and starting a family. At this low point in her life she encounters a lost child who turns out to be the daughter of a businessman, Assar Elo, who is looking for a woman to run the domestic side of his life for him. Sirre exchanges her hospital job for a new one as a housewife – she sees the relationship in practical terms, as a form of employment and a way to realize her dreams of a family.
The new “job” is not without its complexities, however. Sirre, who has now acquired financial security but is also financially dependent on her husband, settles down to the task of creating a family home in the expensive and spacious apartment Assar has bought. She immerses herself in glossy interior design magazines and becomes an expert on the latest consumer fashions, organizing the redecoration. At the same time she has to live with Assar and Vita – something of a challenge, as Assar is a dominating and aggressive male chauvinist who spends most of his time at the office but expects his home and wife to be ready for him when he returns, and Vita an uncertain and selfish pre-teen with a growing array of needs and problems that require constant attention. Quarrels are a regular occurrence, yet Sirre wants to make a success of Vita, seeing her as the daughter she never had, and wants to give her everything — too much, in fact.
Sirre’s old watercolour paintings are stored in a furniture warehouse, and Assar has the idea that they can be used to make money, by creating a series of postcards. But the paintings turn out not to be suitable for the postcard project, and so they are destroyed, in order to save money on the storage costs. Sirre’s life develops into a kind of nightmare, as physical demands are compounded with emotional ones to create a prison-like net of limitations and constraints which prevent her from living her own life as an individual. Yet even though she has possibilities, she doesn’t make use of them. Years earlier, she painted a watercolour on the theme of cancer which became nationally known, and the city’s cancer relief foundation wants her to deliver a talk about her painting. Yet she turns the offer down, and when eventually she tries to break out of the net by returning to work as a cleaner at the foundation’s office, the director recognizes her – her painting is hanging there in a special ceremonial spot.
Sirre does everything to close off the avenues that might bring her the opportunity of fulfilment, yet the new life she has chosen is even more restrictive. Assar and Vita are completely absorbed in the problems of their own personal development, and Sirre gives her life to two people who are incapable of valuing it. In the end, as Assar is openly unfaithful with other women and Vita becomes increasingly sulky and withdrawn, Sirre is returned to herself, alone.
The style of the book is laconic, and the sentences are either short in themselves or built from short phrases which give an impression of breathlessness and stress. Although the description is vividly realistic, reproducing many facets of the visual and tactile reality of life in a big city, it is also characterized by an element of otherness and alienation: familiar scenes and places are presented in terms that make them seem strange and almost other-worldly. This effect is linked to Sirre’s growing sense of estrangement from herself, as she grapples with the impossible task of living the life of a traditional “housewife” – a role which in contemporary society has become obsolete and no longer offers a viable route for women who seek identity and self-esteem. At the end of the novel, Sirre remains an enigma, both to herself and to the reader.
Kreetta Onkeli doesn't judge her characters, but presents them as they are, with their conflicts and personal flaws and problems: her criticism is reserved for a social environment that is perceived as hostile to individual aspirations and genuine human development. This portrayal of life in a big city would be understood anywhere in Europe or North America today.
David McDuff
Saturday, 25 July 2009
The first 20 years are the worst
Henrik Jansson reviews Swedish author Pia Hintze's new novel Älskling in Hbl, and although he has some reservations about what he calls the occasional "chattiness" of the style, he points to Hintze's ability to uncover and portray the reality of relationships and new parenthood in a way that's unusual, as it tears away the layers of social convention and secrecy that still surround many of the issues involved. Hintze has a special knack for revealing the unpleasant physical details, the inter-generational conflicts and the fragile nature of each individual's inner picture of reality, yet she does so with a sense of humour and a commitment to exploring the psychology of her characters to the limit. This is a relatively new kind of Nordic fiction, and in this her third novel Hintze is following a path that's also being trodden by other writers, including Finland's Kreetta Onkeli.
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