Writer: Arto Paasilinna
Year: 1988
Pages: 208
IBSN-13: 978-84-339-7400-6
Nota: 10/10
(I think the book is not
published in English yet?)
SYNOPSYS
In the quiet countryside near
Helsinki, and older woman waters the lawn, the swallows chirps and the cat
snoozes. But the idyll is only apparent: the life of Linnea Ravaska, an
eighty-year old widow, is poisoned by some criminals that every month take her
pension. Her unnatural grandson Kauko and his friends destroy everything on
their way, they torture the cat, hit everything for pleasure, and she did not
say anything, until the day she cannot stand it any longer and decides to call
the police and flees to Helsinki. The war and revenge of the horrible trio
could turn into a nightmare if Paasilinna would not have chosen the via of the
farce and the paradox to criticize a society whose ills he is observing with
lucidity. Forgotten old age, marginalized youth, collapsing of the
institutions, drugs, alcoholism, AIDS: everything is made out in the bizarre
unexpected events of the amusing old lady that walks armed with a Parabellum
and whose truly weapons will end up being the candor, a naïve cruelty, and her
tireless defence of her own honour.
