A delicate yet incisive view of the systematic abuse women face daily.
Author: Helmi Kekkonen
Finnish original: Liv!
Publisher: Siltala, 2024
Genre: literary fiction
Number of pages: 183 pp.
Reading material: Finnish original, English sample, English synopsis
Twenty-two-year-old Liv spends the last week of vacation at her family’s summer house. She is relaxed and bored, as young people are in predictable and safe environments.
One morning, Liv gets up early and goes to the cliffs by the sea. She is just about to fall asleep when a strange man suddenly sits next to her, a little too friendly, a little too close. The man’s immediacy and arrogance both fascinate and push away, but in the end the fascination and the desire that awakens in Liv wins, and she arranges a meeting with the man without telling her mother or sisters.
Helmi Kekkonen’s Liv! follows its protagonist agonizingly towards the event that appears to be unavoidable to the reader, even though it shouldn’t. This event splits Liv’s life and the lives of her loved ones into before and after. The women of the island are on a collision course despite the fact that everyone wants the best for Liv. Questions about the definition of sexual violence and the rights and responsibilities of the victim force both mothers and daughters look in the mirror and ask themselves: What would you do in this situation?
“Its feminist message is universal and impressive in its ordinariness.” –Suomen Kuvalehti
Also available:
This Woman’s Life (2021)
Topsy-Turvy Anna (2019)
The Guests (2016)
About the author:
Helmi Kekkonen